ugly sweater champion!

We had another weekend full of Christmas activities! On Saturday morning, we had a special treat of going to Salty's for brunch. One of my adoptive families gave me a gift card and we had a great time feasting on every possible breakfast item!

Saturday night we attended our 2nd annual Ugly Christmas Sweater party. Ben was happy to take home the crown, err raindeer antlers for most creative for his old man/light sweater combo. It was a fun time with friends and great food.

Sunday afternoon Lindsey and I took Adelle out to get a pedi for her birthday. Even though it is winter, it was still fun to do a little pampering and of course a great chance to chat.

Little house update- we have a foundation!

We are off to AZ/CA for the holidays and will be back after the New Year!

even more Christmas festivities!

When it comes to Christmas, we just don't stop celebrating! This past weekend was no exception.

Ben was not feeling very well this weekend so I had to spread some holiday cheer solo for part of Saturday. I volunteered as a "guide" for families coming to get presents for their kids at the toy shop put on by the local YWCA. It was a blessing for me to interact with lots of different parents. I even got to brush up a little on my espanol.. I was actually really sad how much I've lost. I also got asked 3 different times if I was in high school.. I guess some things never change!

After resting all day, Ben was ready to go Sat. night. We went down to Green lake for the pathway of lights. This is probably our newest favorite Seattle holiday activity. We got down there a little early, so we went to Chocolati for some hot cocoa which was conveniently close to where we parked.



It was so fun to walk around the lake with lots of other families while taking in the lights. There were some sporadic carolers and a few pit stops for hot cider.



We finished off the night by driving through "Candy Cane Lane" which is one of the more well known places to check out holiday lights. It's hard not to be disappointed after growing up in Gilbert where people put their lights to music and having 30 blow ups in one yard is not uncommon. However, for Seattle, it was pretty good.

Sunday we went to church, did our normal cleaning, etc. and went to children's ministry. At one point, I looked over at Ben and he was reading a story with about 10 kids surrounding him. My heart skipped a beat at the thought of him being a daddy some day. Maybe not with 10 kids, but still. :)

Merry Christmas!

maybe I'm not only one...

I might be the only one that finds pretty much everything James does hilarious and cute. But, I partly have this blog for our memories, so I want to post this to remember James when he was this little..

Holiday Festivities!

Christmas is in full swing at the Crowl house!

This past weekend we braved the crowds to attend the Figgy Pudding Caroling contest in downtown.

We also checked out the gingerbread houses at the Sheraton. I use the term gingerbread because these were incredible creations made by local architecture firms.


Sunday afternoon we made some delicious sugar cookies with Jessie, Mark and James. I mistakenly explained that frosting a cookie included taking a bite out of it shortly after finishing. James thought it was a great activity except he wanted to bite every cookie he frosted!

Monday night our community group went and watched the Christmas ships on Edmonds pier and had a cookie exchange. We have had incredibly sunny weather recently, but it has been cold!!!

This is such a special time of year! In other exciting news... our house is finally being built!

Charlie Brown would be happy

Thanksgiving was absolutely wonderful. The best food ever, and wonderful company to boot! We spent the morning delivering food to some home bound clients of the local food bank. We go there every other week, but this was our chance to give them some fresh, non expired good food! We had a great time serving the people we have come to know and care for.


We spent the rest of the day at Jessie & Marks eating good food, playing some games, and scooping out our plan for Black Friday.


It's not even worth mentioning my Black Friday experience at Best Buy at 4:40 in the morning other than it did not work out as planned. We are back on the hunt for a washer/dryer set. Ben did scoop up all of the things we wanted at Office Depot including a new digital camera after ours broke in Seaside.

Saturday we headed out into the wilderness for our first forest tree cutting experience. It was beautiful scenery and we really enjoyed spending time with our friends. Our eye for good trees however is not the best. We thought we picked out a real winner, but when we got home and stood it up in our living room we started laughing hysterically. It definitely was not as full as we thought it was and struggled to put up 1/2 of our ornament collection. Oh well, it was a fun experience!