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Lydia and Hadley's first snow man!

Today we got the rare, but fabulous Seattle snow storm!  Growing up in New England, winter meant snow and that’s one of the things I miss most being in temperate Seattle.  My complaints about this climate are it’s never hot enough or cold enough.  So it was very exciting when the air got cold and our constant precipitation actually turned into something fun.  Lydia, Hadley, and I took full advantage (Allan was on his way back from the grocery store, battling the roads and clueless Seattle drivers who immediately panic as soon as a flake hits the ground).  First we went cross-country skiing, then build a snowman (their first!), made snow angels, and finally did some sledding up and down our sidewalk.  Hooray for snow!

Hadley and Lydia making fresh tracks on our street

We had a wonderful Christmas with my family in Michigan!  Below are some of the highlights.

Hadley and Lydia trying on Santa hats

Gigi and Lydia opening an early Christmas present -- ice skates!

Grandpa and Hadley go for a whirl

Me, Lydia, and Aunt Laura

Deocrating gingerbread girls with Gigi

Lydia and Hadley putting out treats for Santa and his reindeer

Lydia and Hadley trying on the fabulous scarfs, hats, and mittens that Grandma J. made

The whole gang

Lydia, me, and Hadley in the teddy bear suite

For the second year, we spent a weekend downtown taking in all of the Seattle Christmas sites.  Unlike last year, the Teddy Bear suite at the Fairmont Hotel was a definite hit.  The entire room is filled with teddy bears of all sizes and spectacular decorations, plus there is a cozy couch with lots of teddy-bear and Christmas themed books.  The girls love reading so we spent a lot of time there reading books and snuggling with teddy bears.

Teddys lounging in bed

Another big highlight for the girls was the Christmas carosel — which is no suprise since they are huge fans of all carosels and logged some serious hours over the last year going up and down on horses (or other animals).  We even ran into our friends, the Haberkorns, at the carosel this morning.

Hadley and Lydia on the Christmas carousel

We briefly hit the amazing gingerbread village at the Sheraton (it was packed and the girls were exhausted) and walked through Pike’s Place Market.  The market was my favorite stop.   I love it anytime of year — such a cool, uniquely Seattle place — but it especially shined covered in Christmas decorations.  And of course, just staying in a hotel room was excitment in itself.

Gingerbread masterpiece

Market at sunset

Market reinpigs

Hadley jumping on the bed in the hotel room

Lydia playing hide-n-seek behind the curtains

Lydia and Hadley posing in front of the huge tree in the Fairmont lobby

The girls had a special visitor as school today — Prancer!  Unlike Dancer last year, Prancer is a bit lacking in the antler department, but a real reindeer nonetheless.  What an awesome pre-school!  Above is Lydia, Hadley, Prancer, and Santa’s elf.

Lydia and Hadley

The tree is up, the house is decorated, my laundry hasn’t been folded in 2 weeks, catalogs are perched in precarious piles all over the house, our schedules are crazy and our days walk the fine line between out of control and magical.

Happy Holidays!

We had a great Thanksgiving in Chattanooga, TN with Allan’s family.  Below are some highlights:

L&H hanging out with 2nd cousin Uma (all three dresses were made by their respective Grandmas)

Allan drawing a chalk outline around Hadley (by the end of the day, the driveway looked like a crime scene)

The Carscaddon clan -- Judy, Allan, me, Wesley, Bruce, Shawna, and Laura

Hadley riding the Chattanooga carosel

H&L checking out the ferry boat on the Tennessee River

Birthday girls

I have the great honor of sharing my birthday with my amazing mother.  This year, we celebrated early and in style with a trip to Canyon Ranch in Tucson, AZ.  It was a milestone birthday for the two of us (and my sister in August), so we commemorated the event with a fabulous trip that we’ll always remember.  A truly special place to celebrate a special day.

Mom and one of the fabulous animal sculptures around the ranch

The spa -- ahhhh!

Me, Laura, and the resident zebra

Local flora and fauna

Sunset bike ride with a group of my moms friends from MI

Tiger Hadley and Lydia Lion (holding their muses)

As I wrote about last year, one of the (many) suprises of being a parent is that Halloween isn’t a day, but rather a season.  It was really fun this year since the girls “got” Halloween.  In contrast to last year where two adorable butterflies walked up and down the street munching raisins and wondering why people were offering bright colored packages to them, this year they were marching right up to the candy bowl and in between stops declaring “I want more candy.”  Our Halloween events this year included the girls wearing their costumes to school the entire week before Halloween, trick-or-treating at Microsoft, trick-or-treating at the zoo for their annual Pumpkin Bash, trick-or-treating two different nights at various neighborhood businesses centers (the girls decided to switch costumes one night), and finally trick-or-treating around the neighborhood and at their teacher’s house (who really knows how to do Halloween).  By the 31st, we were all exhausted after a busy social social season.

Carving pumpkins (H&L)

Jack-o-laterns (designed by the girls)

Trick-or-treating at Microsoft

Hadley posing in front of a fellow tiger at the zoo

Liger and Tion

Allan and Hadley

Lydia and Hadley in the pumpkin patch

Fall has fallen, so we made our annual trip to the pumpkin patch today.  There are several great patches around and we’ve been to a different one every year.  Our favorite though is one that we discovered pre-kids with my sister, Laura.  It’s a working farm with a tractor that takes you out to a patch where you cut your own pumpkins, lots of other veggies growing nearby, some animals, and best of all — a pumpkin trebuchet.  Sadly we couldn’t remember the name.  So we randomly chose a patch this year and lo and behold — it was the famed Laura trebuchet patch, Jubilee Farms.

Riding out to the pumpkin patch (L and H)

The rig

H and L watching Allan cut a pumpkin from the vine

The farm held up to our high expectations.  Farmer Eric, who owns the farm drove us back from the pumpkin patch and let our pumpkins ride in the shovel of the tractor.  We also got to participate in a pumpkin trebuchet launch (fun fact: the difference between a trebuchet and a catapult is that a trebuchet has a counter-weight vs. a spring in a catapult).

Loading the trebuchet

L and H helping set up the trebuchet

Afterwards the girls found the trebuchet pumpkin pieces brought them to the farm pigs.  Although somehow they ended up in our car. . .

Hadley offering the trebuchet pumpkin piece to the farm pig

The only bittersweet thing about our day was that it was the first time since the girls were born that Grandma Judy hasn’t been with us for our pumpkin patch visit.  Although we’re hopeful that we’ll see her soon!

H and L in the wheel-barrow with their pumpkins

Lydia among the BIG salmon

In the “only in Seattle” category, we spent today at the annual Salmon Days Festival in nearby Issaquah.  It’s a celebration of the salmon coming back to Issaquah River to spawn.  And sure enough, in the local stream were thousands of salmon all swimming upstream.  Issaquah also has a salmon hatchery with a fish ladder, so we got to see them jump up steps and also got some underwater views through glass windows.  We have a fish ladder in Seattle at the Ballard locks and it remains one of my favorite spots in Seattle.  It’s certainly something unique to our city and seeing thousands of huge salmon, especially jumping up a ladder, is just really cool.

Salmon swimming upstream

Me, Lydia, and Hadley taking a break at the Salmon Hatchery

Beyond the hatchery, there was a whole festival in downtown Issaquah — complete with Sammy the Salmon swimming through the crowd and lots of bad fish humor (for example, the festival was oh”fish”ically “spawn”sored by Swedish Medical Center).

Sammy the Salmon

They closed off the historic main street, which was set up with tents with local artist’s work and the requisite disgusting fair food.  We kicked off our festival morning by all running in the Salmon Days 10K.  Allan pushed the girls in the double-jogging stroller, breaking many spirits as he zipped past runners with 90 pounds of toddler+stroller.  At the end of the race, a photographer from the Issaquah Times came showed us a pic he snapped and got our names so he could publish our picture in the paper.  He did warn us though that he also got a shot of a guy running in a whopee cushin, so that naturally may trump us.

Allan and his increasingly heavy running load (H and L)