New Year's Eve was celebrated at a place called National Harbor. We loved looking at the great "leftover" Christmas decorations and the fun water fountain display.

In the end, we were a little disappointed because we missed a few things that we really wanted to see. But we were able to go on a scavenger hunt for large stuffed Peeps, see an electric train display, eat at a new restaurant, marvel at the lights, and spend time together as a family.

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!!

Not sure why we didn't take lots of pictures, but we really did have a great Christmas! Since we didn't make it back to Hawaii this year, we thought we really needed to make it big for Lillie.

So, starting on December 1st, Keola and I decided to put one present every day until Christmas, under the tree for Lillie. By the middle of the month, we both thought, "who was crazy enough to think of THIS idea!!" As you can see, along with our 25 gifts, Lillie got SO much from family!!

Here's just some pictures of the goodies!

In the end, Lillie was thrilled with the wonderful gifts she received for Christmas. Thank you all for the generous presents!!

"MOM!! Something's happening!!"

The weekend before Christmas, we awaited the big snowstorm that we didn't realize would be SO big!! It started with this...

Then a little bit of this...

Then, before we knew it, it was this!!!


With at least 17 inches of snow, Lillie wanted to experience all of it first hand!

Daddy was brave enough to hike Lillie up our steep hill and planned on sledding down. After 2 seconds, Lillie was NOT having it!! So, Daddy thought maybe making some of Lillie's favorite, snow angels, would make our little angel happy. NOPE!! Another 2 seconds and our little angel was screaming to come back in. "I don't look happy, but I'm much warmer INSIDE!"

By the next day, the sun was out and the snow had settled a little. Lillie was the first to get her coat on and wanted a second try at the great outdoors. This time, she was much more cautious and stayed close to the house, right outside the garage. She took her little shovel and helped Daddy create.

This is what they came up with! Maybe next year we can create something at least Lillie's size! ha ha

What do you do after Thanksgiving dinner? Get ready for Christmas, of course!!
Lillie and I visited a flower shop/nursery here in Maryland months ago, that is quite famous in the area. I told Keola we should stop by and see what's happening for Christmas and this is what we saw.

First, there were countless theme decorated Christmas trees, with all the decorations for sale. There was also a cute Christmas village and hundreds of poinsettias in various colors. Then, what Lillie was most interested in, the elaborate train set up.

We also found a wintery Christmas scene to take pictures in front of.

And after the wintery scene...

Santa!!! This was the FIRST time Lillie took a picture with Old St. Nick, all by herself!! All be it was for a split minute, it was enough time for her to blurt out what she wanted for Christmas and for me to take a quick picture. I'm so proud of our little girl!

After such a fun morning with Santa, we had to come home and decorate the house.

This is our "Childhood Tree" The majority of the ornaments are ones that Keola's mom saved from when Keola was younger, and sent to us years ago.
Here's the front of our fireplace with our stockings and these cool glittery, red trees we found earlier that day.

This is our "Red and Gold Tree" Over the years we have found various red and gold decorations to add to it.

This is Lillie's advent calendar. We filled each of the pockets with her favorite candies - milky way, Reeses peanut butter cups, lollipops, and Swedish fish.

This is our "Homemade Tree". Years ago, I was really into making crochet thread snowflakes. We decided to decorate a little tree with my creations. So there are snowflakes, garland, and a tree skirt that I crocheted, some wooden spoon snowmen that I made at a Relief Society activity, and a crocheted snowflake to top it all off.

This is the top of our bookshelf. Keola and I sometimes laugh at the fact that the "greenery" stays up there all year long and we just switch out the "holiday" color - fall leaves, holly berries - I wonder what will go up in January?? ha ha

This is our little "Rustic Tree". We filled it with ornaments that are all a little worn and distressed.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

For the big Turkey Day, we went to a friends house (the other counselor in the stake presidency), and ate to our hearts content. It was so delicious and Lillie had a grand time playing with some of the grandkids.

Of all the years we have been married, we have never made a REAL Thanksgiving dinner ourselves. We were either in Las Vegas, at a restaurant, or at a friends home. This year we decided to take the plunge and actually try the whole deal. For years we had all the sides under our belt - mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potatoes, rolls, and green bean casserole - but we NEVER tried a whole turkey. Like I said, we spent Thanksgiving at a friends house, so we were not brave enough to try the real deal on the actual day, but we did make Thanksgiving Part II on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

So here's the BIG BIRD!!

I have to say, we were pretty impressed with ourselves. I think we may actually be able to have people over to OUR house next year!!

Here's the rest of our feast.

Special Visitor

A few weeks before Thanksgiving, we received a phone call from the church office building in Salt Lake City. We were told that Elder William R. Walker of the First Quorum of the Seventy would be visiting our mission. That alone would be an exciting and special visit, but what made this occasion even more wonderful is that Elder Walker was Keola's mission president from Japan!

We were very excited to hear he would be touring the Washington D.C. missions and wanted to visit with us. We were able to set aside Sunday to meet with Elder Walker and his wife as they attended our ward and came to our home after to relax and later have dinner. We made them sukiyaki which was fun and delicious. With all the excitement (and nervous-ness) of having our special guest, this is the only picture we took.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

I'm going to apologize now for not having a lot of pictures of our Halloween festivities. We took as many pictures as we could, but I don't think we really captured the REAL fun Lillie had this week.

We started the week by going to another ward's trunk-or-treat. Of course, I didn't take any pictures there. Lillie got a lot of candy and had fun dressing up.

Then, it was off to our own ward's party on Friday night. We started with games in the cultural hall. Lillie was too quick for me to take a picture of her throwing the beanbags into a large wood pumpkin cutout, but I happened to get a picture of her getting her prize.

Here's Lillie with the neighborhood spider - her friend Sam.
Lillie got blindfolded, spun around, and...

tried to pin the nose on the witch. Pretty accurate huh?!?

Next, we moved on to some ring tossing on the witch's hat.

Next was the age old favorite...the cake walk.

Random picture some BEEhives and their leader. So cute!

Here's our little Princess...or Cinderella, as she likes to be called.

No trick or treating pictures - too dark. We ended up making 3 dozen candy and caramel apples that we passed out to some families in the ward. While we drove to their homes, Lillie was able to do some trick or treating at their homes. Then we came home and did a little trick or treating in our neighborhood. We only have 10 homes in our subdivision, and 4 of them passed candy out. We noticed a lot of people drive to other subdivisions to get candy, either because their neighborhood is a little small (like ours) or because the homes are a little far apart so they find a neighborhood where the homes are really close together. All in all, it was a fun night. This was Lillie's first time going home to home and she LOVED it!!