A weekend of traditions

We are in full force Christmas spirit here at the Crowl house. This past weekend was packed full of some of our favorite holiday events.

On Friday afternoon, Colter & I braved crazy Friday traffic to meet up with a former coworker at Swanson's nursery. Erin had a baby boy, August, a week after Colter. Here is a post with our babies in our bellies :) Erin is the one on the left. Here are the babes 9 months later- hard to get a good picture because they are always movin! We had a great time wandering through the huge nursery, and checking out the live camel and reindeer!

On Saturday morning, my friend Stephanie and I volunteered at the Snohomish county toy shop. Families can come shop for their kiddos and we were their "guides" to help them through the process of picking out the gifts. This was my second year volunteering- I love making this a tradition.

Saturday afternoon/evening was my absolute favorite event! The Greenlake luminaries. I love love love so many things about this night- the beautiful luminaries, the cocoa, the great conversation you can have while walking, the peaceful lake under the moonlight, the carolers.. the list goes on. Colter hung in there for almost the whole way before he started to lose it- then I realized that it was 6:30 and he had lost a glove and hadn't eaten yet.. it was ok for him to lose it :) What a blessing it is to live in such a fun place.

A fun addition this year was that we found an actual house with hard core decked out Christmas lights! My sister and I were convinced that there weren't any houses in Seattle that could compare to Arizona Christmas lights. If you've been around my sister or I long enough, chances

you have heard us talk about our biggest holiday bomb.. being trapped on the holiday "lights" bus for 4 hours without really seeing any lights. My sister is a bit too kind in describing it here .. it was horrible. Anyway, every year we see some good houses, but nothing to music or anything crazy like blanketing lights on the ground. Well this year, we heard about an amazing house out in the boonies.. man was it worth the trek. It was AWESOME! We randomly ran into a couple from my sister's community group, so here we all are! If you are local, here is their website: http://www.woodinvillewonderland.com/

Ben's jacket had its own light show going on.

It's the most wonderful time of the year!