Quote of the day

Me: "Jayne, do you want to take your boots off?"
Jayne: "No. You can take them off."

Classic.

Ghahppy Thahnksgihving Bahck (Just say it with a spanish accent ok? thanks)

Thanksgiving reminds me of a lot of things.

This lovely lady - Rose - Is one of those things. Name that movie!

Seth and Amy were awesome enough to fly me home for Thanksgiving! I arrived to this

I hadn't seen snow in a while, and neither had my big cousin Jake (not to be confused with my little cousin Jake), So we went out at like 11:11pm and foofed all over in it like little kids. (No, this picture isn't a crime scene. We were having a blast. Hanna got all creeped out when I showed it to her... really?! Get cho mind outta da gutter, Nah!)

Reason #1 for visiting home? DORKY SISTER!!!

Emmy: "Dats dross"

Have I mentioned the fact that my siblings possess the ability to create epic children?

And the ability to lull them to sleep anywhere?

This is Emmy begging Austin to read to her. He wasn't stoked on the idea, but who can say no to miss curly head with 2-foot-long batting eyelashes?

Lainey got in on the action, and before long they were both on his lap. Austin was the hero.

After 10 days of.... ??? I flew back to the "pac no wee" (pacific north west, thanks Jayne). I happened to be flying home with 3 or 4 people from my ward up here who were also visiting family in Utah! It was great. I even got a bit of visiting teaching done on my flight. Now here's the trivial part.... No one else could see this, but if you look really close at the picture, there's a little bright dot below the wing, and inside it is the shaddow of our plane, as well as a huge circular glare around the right side of the pic. I don't know how this happened, I kinda duhmb, but... it looked so cool!

Jayne (little Jayne, not to be confused with.... little-but-not-as-little Jayne) came running up to me in the airport, and didn't calm down till she looked like this. She was still thinking in her sleep.

Hey little Jake!

Jealous much? :)

The extended fam saves us again!

Whew what a week! Uncle Allen and Aunt Janis came in for the week, along with my cousin Rachel and her cutie patootie family. It was so fun to spend time with them and their crazy crew. I haven't ever really spent time with them (I'm just a baby Christensen!) so it was fun to hang out for a few days.

Audrey and Jayne are buds

Jayne can down a whole can of "little bean soup" (lentil soup) in like T minus 10 seconds. It's pretty entertaining.

The girls were hiding from the boys at playgroup hehe. I taught them well.

We all went to dinner at Claim Jumper (UHMAZING) and on the way out Seth wanted to try his luck at the.... I don't even know what to call it. You put your hand on this thing and the lights indicate your level of loving abilities :) He got "Clammy", so we all had to try. No one made it very high.... except me. I got the top score of "Uncontrollable". I walked out of the restaurant with my victory fists held high. An old man behind us asked Rachel "Is that woman available?"

Todd and Aunt Jannie did a huge number on the yard and upstairs bathroom. I'm serious, we were getting bad vibes from the neighbors but we have always been too tired to tackle the projects. And the girls had a good time following Todd around the yard :) We still possess the only palm trees in Redmond, but they are for sale. So... hit me up if you want some random palm trees.

I love our crazy life!

So we have had some pretty great times these past couple weeks.

Since Halloween was on Sunday this year, an awesome family from our ward invited us over for a spooky dinner

This is amazing to me. "Brains" in a mini pumpkin, witches broom bread, vampire blood soup, eyeballs, and witches hair veggies. So cute.

Seth and Amy headed out last weekend, so the kids and I headed to the childrens museum. It was so awesome. They have this big exhibit about water and how evaporation and all that cool stuff works. Plus you can send balls and other random things down the fountains. Really, what could be more entertaining.

Ellie practiced her creativeness and art skills upon the skin of the guinea pig sister

Her pillow was black the next morning

Gunther (Jake) was super mellow. He was perfectly content with blocks. For 2 hours.

Sam has a very balanced head, which allows him to make perfectly balanced... things... like this.

Who doesn't like ginormous LightBrites, that is what I would like to know.

Beth and Co. came with us, and Ethan worked the bowling-ball lifting exhibit till it burned down. just kidding.

This is the Scarf Shooter. It sucks up scarves and they go through this crazy maze of hoses then shoots out above your head. I had to hold myself back. I want one of those in my future home.

I need to take chillax lessons from Jake.

Next was haircut time!!! We all loaded in the van and drove to this cutest little house with the cutest little mommy and got hair cuts all around. (But ceptins me... till next week!).

phở (prounounced "Fuh") is this crazy Vietnamese soup that is mostly popular because of its name. Seth swears by it (no pun intended) and today we found out that Jake loves it too! There are pho shops all over town, including one called "What The Pho?!"

Jake rocks, I can't stop taking pictures of him. Seth put my helmet on him tonight and it almost fit.... Why didn't I inherit the big Christensen head?

The Last Soccer Saturday

Twas a dreary rainy one

Every child needs one of these days

Every kick was filled with a face full of mud

Every coach (named Amy) withstood the weather and instructed her team with precision

Rose decided to come enjoy the traziness with us

Ellie and Sam both celebrated their muddy wins :)

brain monitor meets camithenoncreativemess

Sam's fourth-grade class is having a cake... thing (?), and he was supposed to make one tonight. But he was too busy doing homework, so I helped. He did the brains though :)

Costume pics to come! Stay tuned tomorrow!

Pumpkins!

Can you tell which one is mine?

Happy Birthday Jayne! (plus a couple other adventures)

This past week was Jayne's 4th birthday, and it was a week long party! Four is a big deal. She is now a big girl. Anyone who calls her a little girl gets pwned.

Since Jayne and I seem to have a lot of time together, I decided to let her show me the 'hood. She took me down to the pond to throw rocks. We decided to only go on walks when it's raining, because splashing in puddles is "so cute", but it has only rained twice since I've been here so we might need to make up a new rule till winter hits.

I think I was a bit jealous of Jayne's party. 7 little princesses, all dressed up, pink and giggles everywhere, no boys allowed.... it was heaven.

We decorated princess hats (which I made. oh yeah. i do crafts.) and danced (i didn't dance though... their teacher would have been mad at me for being a bad example) and had a tea party and went on a fairy treasure hunt (which I made up. oh yeah. i can organize stuff.) It was pretty much dazzling.

She got a couple new princess dresses, and this one is hilarious. Hanna, I promise you wish you had one of these. You can't really tell in the pic, but this thing is 100% frills.

Jayne and Claire -- so cute.

Tip for my brain for the future: if the kids are bored, get out the paints and lock them on the back porch! It worked for like 2 hours! Even Jake found it amusing.

A few days ago I had the privileged of having lunch with Seth and Amy on the Microsoft campus where Seth works. I guess they have multiple cafeterias on campus, and they are pretty awesome. There are all these great food places and you just load up. (I got a kick out of the microsoft soup bowl)

I also found one of my favorite restaurants of all time last week. It's called La Vita E Bella and it's in downtown Seattle, a couple blocks from Pike's Place. It's owned by this guy named Giuseppe (who Amy calls my Italian Lover, cuz I won't stop talking about his amazing restaurant) and he is just so Italian. I loved it.

Of course I ate on the sidewalk. I almost cried from overwhelming nostalgia when I bit into this pizza.
This is my friend Beth. She is actually Amy's friend Beth, but I adopted her into my (teenie tiny) friend circle. It's her birthday tomorrow, so we had dinner and cake after church for her :) Her two boys are SO funny too, I've never met any kids like them in my life.
Yay for Washington! I hate it sooooo much, can you tell? ;)