We flew to Washington very late in December for Christmas with the family. Our reason for not going until December 22? So that we could stay our normal two weeks then fly to Los Angeles to take a 15-day Panama Canal cruise back to Florida in January. We’d be away from Florida for a month total. All of our Christmas shopping was done on-line in advance and sent to our son’s house in Puyallup, since we’d be arriving there on the night of Dec. 22. Packing for Christmas, winter, and the tropics did not result in carry-on bags only. 🙂
We had our Sell family Christmas on the 23rd at my nephew’s house. It was great to see my dad, the cousins and all the various offspring! Here’s me with our sons Brian, Joe, daughter Janea, and Bennett who is Brian’s youngest son, now five months old.
Me, my dad who is turning 92 in March, and my brother Carl who we will be cruising with next month.
My dad with nine of his great grandchildren plus Janea. Let’s see… we have 4 kids and 8 grandkids. Carl has 3 sons and 6 grandkids. So Papa has 14 great-grands right now.
And then we added four more of the grandchildren that were here, so we had 5/7 grands and 9/14 great-grands in this picture with Papa. It was a fun gathering and quite noisy!
Christmas eve was spent wrapping gifts and hanging out with Brian and his family. We also were able to attend our old church for Christmas Eve Candlelight service and we got lots of hugs from some of our most favorite people there. The next adventure was Christmas day evening at Joe’s house with his family. Audri is nearly 18, and Zoey is nearly 8. Plus they are expecting a new bundle of joy in February!! It is quite an unexpected and miraculous baby given a whole host of medical challenges. God must have an extraordinary plan for this little man joining our family!
Next up was an adventure to Leavenworth to spend a few special days with Brian and Shannon’s families. It was cold and there was some snow on the ground which made it more magical. We had fun in our VRBO house right in town. The lights at night were so pretty and festive, and we could walk into town easy schmeazy. Town was very crowded so it was nice that we didn’t have to mess with parking and so on. Shannon has triplets that are 4 1/2 years old. Charlotte is always happy to hang out with me, and she did an excellent job holding my hand so that I wouldn’t get run over by a reindeer. I’m pretty sure they have not heard the song about “Grandma got run over by a reindeer”, but she was very good at keeping track of me. I just noticed that we only have one more adult than children! Grampa is the only one without a child in arms!
We even had our own reindeer antlers.
The kids took advantage of snow in the yard and had a good time inner-tubing and then sliding down what we called “penguin hill”. They looked like penguins sliding down on their bellies. It was so cute!
A couple of years ago Amanda started a tradition with the kids of making sugar cookies. This year was no exception, so they got to cut out and decorate cookies for us. They always enjoy this activity!
Grampa and Bennett hung out in the living room together while the kitchen exploded with flour, cookies and sprinkles everywhere.
There is a reindeer farm nearby, so we went to visit the critters, learn about them, and feed them.
It was super funny when the lady doing the presentation was telling us about going into the pens. She said something to the children with grandparents here, to keep an eye on your grandmas so they didn’t get run over by the reindeer. Charlotte turned and pointed at me with great big eyes! HA! It was perfect. She kept good track of me.
Did you know that reindeer don’t have big front teeth? Disney gave Sven some big front teeth in the movie ‘Frozen’, but that’s not for real. They just use their lips to take the pellets of food from your hand. I thought this was a pretty funny picture!
All the kids fed the critters and it was a fun experience. I was surprised that none of them were afraid to do it!
We were in the pen with the young critters which was good. The big adult ones (both male and female) have very large antlers!
We had lots of fun in the house playing games, laughing and having fun. Grampa with his hands full – Cooper, Owen, Kason & Char.
We also went on a sleigh ride which was fun. While we were waiting for our sleigh to be ready, Brian started a little snowball fight which the kids thought was super fun.
We learned about the big draft horses that come from the Amish communities. We had a two-horse-open-sleigh. We learned that the horse on the left is “the brains” because he deals with oncoming traffic. The horse on the right is “the braun” because in the farming community, it is the one dealing with the ditch or the already plowed soil in the ‘row to hoe”.
We celebrated our Christmas morning on the 27th, complete with our traditional cinnamon rolls and Santa Sacks full of gifts for everyone. This is our fantastic family foto. Most of us had Grinch clothes on, but we forgot to take good pictures of all our outfits. This was really a super fun time. It works out great that our kids can have their own special Christmas morning in their own homes with their kids, then we get together for a few days of fun. Before we left, we all agreed that we should do it again, so we got online and found a different house in the mountains and reserved it for next year. It’s perfect to meet in the mountains, since Shan’s family lives to the east and Brian’s family lives to the west.
Our Washington visit was such a fun time, utilizing our winter clothes, coats, boots, hats, scarves, and gloves. Next up is a tropical cruise with a completely different set of clothing requirements.