The Many Stages of Christmas

Christmas was a multi-day event for us again this year. It's nice because we can have some ample time at each stop to spend time with everyone and truly be relaxed! Our Christmas started on Saturday the 22nd with the Martinson family. We all gathered in North Bend for brunch. We had a very nice day full of good fun, laughter, relaxation and delicious food. Alistair was asleep in the car when we got there and when we brought him in, he was being shy until he saw Natalie. He LOVES Natalie. He hopped off my lap and went to her on the couch...we didn't see much of him the remainder of the day besides needing some items like diapers and food.
Alistair has figured out how cameras have worked, kind of. He thinks you put it right up to your face. He "took" many photos of himself with my parents camera.
Carrie got a new book for Christmas and wanted her grandma to read it to her. Alistair wanted in on the action too!

We did our Christmas on Christmas Eve morning. Alistair's big present was this rocking puppy. Our friends have a rocking horse for thier son and Alistair spent almost the entire time we were at their house on the horse, so we figured he would enjoy his own. It's nice because he can get himself on it, no parents required! He know exactly what to do when he saw it! (: We then headed down to my parent's house for Christmas Eve with my mom's family. We had a delicious dinner and nice time together despite the fact that Grandma couldn't make it due to being sick!

We spent the night and woke up Christmas morning on Fox Island. My brother, Michelle and Natalie came out around 11 or so and we had a fun time opening stockings and gifts and then just hung out for a bit and played with our new toys.

Natalie and Uncle Seth tearing into their stockings

Alistair has his stocking and is posing with his cheesy grin in tact.

Christmas afternoon we headed down to Olympia to have Christmas dinner with the Hennesseys. We had standing pork roast with stuffing and some other delicious side dishes. Alistair got a cool new horse to ride on, although he won't truly be big enough for it for a while. Probably a good thing because right now he is very unsure of the horse and would rather not be on it! Part of that may stem from the fact that he was very tired and had had it for the day!

To go with his horse, Alistair got a genuine cowboy hat. He looks pretty good!

Hi Ho Silver Away!!!

Snow Shoeing Near Iron Goat Trail

This past Saturday we headed up Stevens Pass with our friend Brian to go snow shoeing. We have been meaning to go and for whatever reason it just hasn't worked out in the past. So we made time to do it this weekend and it was a lot of fun! Where we ended up, there really wasn't a need for snow shoes (ie the snow was not more than mid shin deep or so), but it was still good to try them out and get the hang of it for future outings! We drove all the way to the summit and read about the trails we could go on. Unfortunately for the majority of what we would have done, we would have been walking along the ski runs and we wouldn't be able to let Sadie off leash for fear of causing ski accidents! So we headed back down to the turn off for Iron Goat trail and hiked the road that goes to the Forest Service road for Iron Goat. There was plenty of snow and it snowed the entire time we were out! Everyone had fun...except on the way back. We let Alistair out of the backpack at our turn around point to play in the snow a little. He cried all the way back, at first because he didn't want to get back in the pack and then probably because he got cold. Sadie seemed to be having the most fun...she LOVES the snow! All in all it was a fun day and we are talking about going again in January. Maybe next time Alistair can stay with someone insead.

I am ready to go, stuffed in this thing. Hmmmm...maybe if I learned to walk I wouldn't have to ride in this get-up!
The novice snoe shoe family.
Brian, our guide for the day
If you can click on this photo and see it bigger, you will see that Alistair is giving his trademark grin for the camera!
Look, I can even stand in the snow by myself! I am getting the hang of this balance thing!

Merry Christmas!

O Christmas Tree

This past weekend we headed out for our annual trek to hunt for the perfect Christmas tree. This year took us to Eatonville to Cox's Tree Farm. There were 12 of us and we all found our trees within 25 minutes of our arrivals! They had a great selection and decent prices. Afterward we headed to Frontier Park in Graham for a lunchtime picnic of hot soup and snacky stuff. It was a gorgeous day and being in the sun made it a little less cold out!

The next morning we set out to decorate the tree. Seth and Alistair worked on the tree lights to give me a year off (it's usually my job). They did a great job and Alistair was very helpful!

The finished product

In an unrelated bit, Alistair is inching closer to walking. He is now standing without holding anything. He will either hold something to get his balance and then let go and stand there for a minute or so while he lectures us or tells a story and then he will sometimes fall back on his butt and do it again. Sometimes when he falls, he will just stand up from the floor. He did take a couple of side steps yesterday to get to his mail cart. He is so close!!!

Our Little Comedian

Alistair let his humor shine through tonight (and desire for a bath)! He decided to perch pieces of his fruit cocktail on his head and wipe his juicy hands through his hair. He was quite the sight and the bathwater had little hints of dinner floating on the suface!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

This weekend we started to deck the halls. Last weekend we got the outside of the house decorated, but this weekend we did preliminary Christmas decorating to get ready for our tree to arrive next weekend. Along with decorating, we also did some Spring Cleaning (or would that be Fall Cleaning). Alistair was quite the help, when he wasn't napping!

We also had our first and probably not last snowfall of the season. They predicted snow earlier in the week and we were all skeptical it would happen. It started falling around 1pm yesterday and before we knew it, we couldn't see the ground anymore...

By the time we went to bed, the snow had piled up about 3 1/2" on the table on the deck! We woke up to slushy snow this morning and it snowed for an hour or two, but then it warmed up, rained and now everything is soaking and over flowing.
This is one of Alistair's favorite look-outs. It is just his height and it has a handy ledge to hang on to. He puts his forehead on the glass to look out and Sadie puts her nose on it when she is standing there...so this glass gets just a tad dirty! Right now Alistair stands there and waves to Frosty on the porch.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! We had a great thanksgiving, both of them! We started off on November 10th with the Martinson crew gathering in Woodinville for our Thanksgiving warm-up. It was a great time and lots of delicious food. That day marked Alistair's first thanksgiving meal. He didn't a lot as we ate at a non-dinner time for him. He snacked a little, but I think he was a little underwhelmed! Thanksgiving day we stopped by Jeff & Michelle's to say hi. They were hosting their first Thanksgiving for her family. Then we continued on down to Olympia to have dinner with Seth's parents, Ethan & Jen and her parents and another couple who are friends of David & Judy. Dinner was delicious and Alistair had maybe a little more of this meal, but again it wasn't at a normal meal time for him and he had been grazing on raw veggies and little pieces of bread!

Here are Alistair and Carrie sharing the rocking chair. Alistair could really get that chair moving and Carrie seemed to enjoy the ride! They also shared some grapes.
Alistair's first Thanksgiving meal.

And of course, it wouldn't be the weekend after Thanksgiving without putting up the lights. We were the second ones with our lights up on our block. Many people have caught up since then! Alistair was out "helping" us with the snowman.

Hennessey Happenings

We have been keeping ourselves fairly busy recently. We find a good combination of fun and work on the weekends and have managed to get some stuff done around the house as well as enjoy all Fall has to offer. Being that it is fall, raking the leaves in our yard was a HUGE task.

Alistair helped between doing laps with his mail cart. Seth was filling a spider leaf bag to display on our roof and Alistair would stop to put a few handfuls in.
Seth also celebrated his 32nd birthday. No mustangs this year, but I think a trip to Hawaii was a close second! We had a nice dinner at home followed by some delicious brownies and book reading.

The weekend before Halloween found us out at Grayland Beach yurting with my parents. They brought their trailer. There are hook-ups in the yurt sites, so we were able to all be together. We had a blast! The weather was gorgeous, almost slightly warm during the day but then it got bitter cold at night. There was no precipitation at all! The best part of the weekend was that they opened razor clam digging. So my mom, Seth and I got 3-day clam digging licenses and got our limits (15 clams each) in about 20 minutes both Friday and Saturday. It was amazing to see how many people were out digging. My dad was the official wrangler of Alistair. He brought out his mail cart Saturday, but quickly was escorted into the stroller when it became apparent that we would have out clams dug before they got there!

Here I am digging those fabulous clams. It is back-breaking work as you can see.

The first full weekend after we got back from Hawaii we went to Craven Farms in Snohomish to get pumpkins. It is a really neat place. I am not sure we really got a deal on our pumpkins, but the outing and experience was fun. We had lunch in downtown Snohomish afterward.

Roar! Happy Halloween!

Huge props to my mom for making such an awesome (and cute!) costume!!

No Instant Gratification

Our camera broke. We had a mishap in Hawaii where Seth slipped on a rock by the water and threw his hands up in the air to catch his balance and with them came the camera. He did have the strap around his wrist, but the camera went flying anyway. It landed in a puddle of water on a rock and I was right there to pick it up, wipe it off and check it to make sure it still worked. It worked for 2 more days, but it stopped working after we finished at the Volcanos National Park. So our last 2 days of our trip went undocumented; hence there haven't been any posts. I know a photo isn't required to post (possibly some people might argue this), but still. Besides the time since we got back from Hawaii has been very busy. I have been playing single mother as Seth has been away on 2 different business trips. The week after we got back he went to Palm Desert for 2 nights and then this past week he went to Atlanta for 3 nights. I commend anyone who is a single mother because it is HARD work!! I was exhausted every night! Oh we are getting our camera fixed, it should be in the mail on Monday! In the meantime we have been making due with a disposable camera. It is weird to take a photo and not be able to review it and just hope it came out ok! (:

Oh ok for those of you who need a photo, here is a cute shot I took of Alistair and Sadie in August while I was making Alistair's lunch and pacifying his impatientness with goldfish:

A little R&R for Seth & Kelly

Seth and I just got back from a wonderful 10-day vacation to the Big Island of Hawaii. Here is a link to our photos, if you want to look at all of them: http://picasaweb.google.com/kellyhennessey/Hawaii92007

We stayed in a condo in Kailua-Kona that was right on the beach. The photo above is from our lanai. It was literally about 15 feet from the edge of the water and when the tide went out, there was a little lagoon that remainded that usually had a turtle or two in it! We did all kinds of fun stuff. We did some relaxing in the form of laying on the beach, we did some snorkeling and saw lots of turtles and fish, we went on a 1/2 day kayaking trip down the coast, we did lots of driving (we put 800 miles on the car in the 10 days...the island is about 276 miles around!) and we did an awesome trip to the summit of Mauna Kea (13,760 ft) to watch the sunset and then gaze at the billions of stars that came out once the sun had gone away. Hawaiians have graffiti in the form of dead coral on lava rocks. The sides of the road are covered in the messages. We did this at South Point, the southern most point of the USA.

Sunset from 13,760 ft...an awesome site
Self-portrait in our tour-issued parkas and the observatories in the background.

Turtle resting on the black sand beach. There were quite a few of them just laying around sleeping.

Alistair stayed with his grandparents while we were away. He stayed the first part with Seth's parents and the rest with my parents. He did really well, slept and ate well and seemed to have a great time. He didn't really seem too fazed when he saw us when we got home. It was almost like he was thinking, "Oh yeah, you guys weren't here!" Since we have been back, he has been a little weary of where we are if we aren't in the room with him!

You can do it at a trot, you can do it at a gallup...

...you can do it real slow so your heart won't palpitate, just don't be late, Do the Puyallup!

The Puyallup has thoroughly been done by the Hennessey's this year. We all went Sunday of opening weekend with the Sandholms for fried food feast 2007. We walked in the Gold Gate and immediately had Krusty Pups. Those were followed very closely by Empanadas and Scones. Once these items had all been consumed, we looked up to find we could still see the gate we entered through and hadn't made it but possibly 150 feet! Ah gluttony! We did go see some cows, chickens, rabbits, cats, pigs and draft horses as well as went to the Hobby Hall and just walked around. We did some more eating of burgers, curly fries and onion rings. We finished the day out with Ice Cream and rolled ourselves home. Seth, Gabe and Ranae look like they are having fun, but the boys seem to be distracted by something on the ground...

Alistair did a good job eating about half of his cheeseburger, then he decided to stand-up in his stroller and proceed to drop his hamburger and then stand on it. He also got to have Wilcox milk that we purchased in the dairy barn and he drank it out of a straw - such a novelty!

Yesterday Alistair and I accompanied my mom and Natalie to the fair. Doing the fair from the perspective of an almost 5 year old is quite funny. Of course the majority of our day was spent in Sillyville where Natalie rode and rode and rode. I went on the Giant Slide with her and my mom went on the spinning bears with her, but otherwise she went solo on everything. She is tall enough now to do some more adult rides, so we walked around and looked at them. She decided she wanted to do the 2 different octopus rides (one had 4 cars at the end of each tentacle and the other had 2 cars at the end of each tentacle). I wasn't sure what she would think of them, especially once we got going. I kept asking her if she was having fun and she would always giggle and say, "Yeah! This is cool!" Her last ride of the day was with me on the octopus with the 4 cars. Natalie also wanted to go to the Petting Farm. We all went in and Alistair enjoyed petting the little bunnies and then I got a pygmy goat to come over to us. Of course other children came too, although I wasn't calling them! Anyway, Alistair gave the goat loves (when he puts his head down on something like your leg or arm or on Sadie or on the side of a goat and smiles!). We also walked around and looked at some of the exhibits in the agricultural areas, saw some pigs, cows, goats, sheep and dogs and also walked through some of the exhibition hall to look at the stuff we "need" to buy!
Alistair is really enjoying his first scone, can't you tell - he is really contemplating the complexities of the shortbread paired with the raspberry jam and butter.