DISCLAIMER

I just wanted go public with this: I don't know what is going on with the spacing on my blog posts! It always looks normal when I type it, but sometimes there aren't any spaces (or there are too many spaces) between lines when I see the final draft. My attempts to correct the spacing are often ineffective, so I've decided to stop trying to fix it. This is something that personally drives me crazy, so I'm getting it off my chest. Ahhh ... I feel much better! :)

Christmas Morning!

Will woke up to a Winter Wonderland ... of trains, that is! Brice set up a huge track in our front room. Nice work, Santa!


At this point, I think Will is trying to take it all in!

The three of us had a great time emptying our stockings and opening gifts from Santa.

My parents and brother arrived around 10:00 am, and we opened more presents! Afterward, we enjoyed singing Happy Birthday to Jesus (and eating "cake," complete with a candle that Will got to blow out) and eating a brunch of chocolate pancakes (Will's new favorite), scrambled eggs, and sausage patties. Here, Will is playing with his new Matchbox rescue vehicles from Grandma and Grandpa Johnson.

Will is playing in his new Thomas Adventure Hut, also a Christmas present!

Mom volunteered to stay home with Will while Brice, Dad, Darren, and I went to see "Avatar" that afternoon. We liked it! Afterward, we went to the Frye house for a dinner of salad & pizza. Mom and Dad came back to our house after we put Will to bed, and we watched some TV before turning in for the night. What a great day!

Christmas Eve

After attending the early Christmas Eve Service at High Pointe Church, we headed with my family to Olive Garden for a Christmas Eve Dinner. Will opened a gift from YaYa and Pops in the car on the way to dinner, and I'm happy to report that he was busy playing with them most of the time (even when we had to wait to be seated). He also LOVES eating olives off of his fingertips, so ... hooray for OLIVE Garden!

After dinner, we snapped a family photo before putting Will to bed and putting on our Santa hats!

Fun with Friends

We had a fantastic night with our friends the Andersons on December 23rd! They came over with their precious daughter Anja for dinner, dessert, playtime, and Wii time (after the kids were asleep). Here are some snapshots from our time together!



Will LOVES Anja! He couldn't wait to show her his trains and his big boy bed, and he was really excited that she was going to eat in his old high chair. Before they arrived, he kept asking "Anja here?" and "Show Anja?" So cute. Here he is trying to kiss her.

Side Trips

During our time at Rockaway Beach, we made a few side trips. On Saturday, we drove south to Tillamook, OR. We toured the Cheese Factory (and ate samples), drove up to the Air Museum, and bought a few grocery items at Fred Meyer. Along the way, we saw a huge herd of elk and a ton of TRAINS! This was a very good thing for Will's attention span.

On Sunday we traveled back to Tillamook for dinner at Subway. It was like any old Subway until Santa arrived! Yep, there was a chair, Christmas tree, and Santa. Families started pouring in to get pictures of their kids with him. I have never seen this happen in a Subway restaurant, but ... why not? We were finished eating and Will wasn't interested in getting a picture, so we left.

On Monday, we set out for a bigger excursion. We headed north to Cannon Beach, where we visited the candy shop (Will chose a lollipop with Santa on it -- how cute!), the hat shop, and a toy store. After that stop, we drove to Astoria. Will was asleep by then, so Brice and I took the opportunity to get Starbucks drinks and drive around town to find movie locations. This one is the house where "The Goonies" was filmed.

This is the elementary school at which "Kindergarten Cop" was filmed.

We also drove by the house from "Short Circuit," but that picture is trapped on Brice's phone. After driving around for awhile, we stopped at the Ship Inn for a seafood lunch. The restaurant is right on the water, so we enjoyed watching the ships go by. Will especially liked watching them go under the huge bridge!

Our waitress told us about a pier that you can drive out on to watch ships, and she told us that sea lions hang out there. So, we drove there after lunch. Our GPS showed that we were in the middle of the water! Ha! Anyway, we couldn't get very close to the sea lions, but they were amazing. If you look at the picture below, you can see them lounging on the boat ramps. They were making crazy sea lion noises, let me tell you!

Here we are on the tip of the pier. It was so strange to be in a CAR on a pier!

After our fun time in Astoria, we drove back south. We stopped in Seaside and went into the Aquarium, which is only worth it because you can feed the seals and it is hilarious! I wish I had pictures of that.

Anyway, our time on the Oregon Coast was great!

Beach Vacation

Thanks to Brice's parents, we were able to spend four days on the Oregon Coast this December. It was so nice to get away -- Winter Break is really, truly here! We stayed at the Rockaway Beach resort for four nights, and Del and Donna joined us for two of those. The weather was as you'd expect on the Oregon Coast this time of year, but we still ventured out to walk on the beach one morning. We spent most of our fun time in the pool and hot tub, but we don't have pictures of that. Our little guy is definitely a fish, like his Daddy! He had a great time!

Of course we brought "Thomas & Friends" along!

Here is the gorgeous view out the back door!

Here are Brice and Donna canoe racing, courtesy of our Wii!

We love time with "Grandma and Grandpa Johnson!" By the way, Will isn't in the middle of talking here ... we said "Smile!" and this was the pose he held! HA!

Christmas, PLU-style!

Brice is getting acquainted with all kinds of PLU Christmas traditions in 2009! It's a very busy time of year for him, but there are some great memories being made. Here is a tree he spent hours decorating (in the cold) on the PLU campus. The result is beautiful, I must say!

Brice is also stepping into my "choir world" this season, as the Constituent Relations office hosts many gatherings related to the PLU Christmas Festival Concerts. I attended the Portland concert (and pre-concert PLU G.O.L.D. dinner) with him, and it was incredibly fun! We spent time with dear friends -- the Bangsunds and the Meeks. Here we are the next morning, after having stayed at the Casa de Bangsund. (I think we were too tired to make sure the picture was high quality!)

This is our only pictoral documentation of attending the PLU concert at Benaroya Hall in Seattle. (We're in the car on the way home.) Before the show, we attended the "Music Department Affinity Reception" at the hip restaurant Purple, a block from the Concert Hall. Brice was a great host, and I had a ball!

Thank you so much for babysitting, Mom and Dad Frye!

Thankful for a Big Boy Bed

Brice's parents gave us this toddler bed after our Thanksgiving stay. Will did so well during our trip that we put it in his room right away! He is excited to show everyone his "big boy bed." We're proud of you, little man!

Thankful for family

We snapped a few family photos before leaving Salem on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Thank you for blessing us, Johnsons!

Here we are with Brice's Grandpa. Three generations!

Thanksgiving 2009

We had a fun (and delicious) Thanksgiving Day at Brice's parents' house! When we found out that Santa was arriving at the Salem Waterfront Park on a TRAIN the next day, we were there! Here we are waiting for the train.

Here's the train!

Who is this Santa guy, anyway?

A ha!

Oktoberfest

Here are a few snapshots of our date to the Oktoberfest celebration at the Puyallup Fair in mid-October. These pictures were also held prisoner on Brice's phone until recently. We really enjoyed it, since we were reminded of fun times in Germany AND we spent a little time with friends Pat and Missy.

There was actually a woman on a giant swing! I didn't think that sort of thing was real.

We loved the traditional German musicians -- oom pah pah, oom pah pah!

My only regret with Hammerschlagen is that we didn't play sooner! It's a game where you take turns hammering nails into a stump. Ha! There is a special hammer and a certain technique, and it's actually fun! Brice was the champion of our stump (even though some "experienced" Hammerschlagers were showing us the ropes), so he won this ridiculous T-shirt!

Hospital Stay

I wanted to share some darling pictures of Will's hospital stay in mid-October. They were on Brice's phone and didn't make to our computer until recently. Will was having respiratory difficulties, so we took him to the emergency room (after going to urgent care at our doctor's office and calling the nurses later to ask advice when symptoms were persisting). We checked in about 11:30 pm. Will was absolutely fantastic for the first 2-3 hours, but then got very restless -- but he wouldn't sleep! They checked us into a hospital room around 4 am. We were there until around 4 pm. It was very difficult to keep Will strapped into the monitors when he was rested and ready to go! We are grateful for the care we received at Good Sam.

Grandma and Grandpa!

We LOVED having Grandma and Grandpa Johnson come down for a visit in October! As you see, there aren't any pictures of us WITH Grandma and Grandpa! (Forgetful Mommy strikes again!) Will had so much fun with his grandparents. And yes, he can say "Grandma" and "Grandpa" now!

One afternoon during the Johnsons' visit, we went to "The Old Cannery," a HUGE furniture store (complete with giant model trains) in Sumner. Will thought he was in heaven! One of the salesmen even gave him a HUGE train whistle. Two thumbs way up.






Here are some pictures of Will eating Grandma's zucchini bread. He called it "cake" and gobbled it right up! (Diregard the angry expression in photo #2. He's just playing it cool.)

Trick-or-Treat!

Another lesson learned: our street in Puyallup is NOT like 2nd St. in Ellensburg! After watching Roger and Joed hand out ONE PIECE of candy to over 500 kids and still run out of candy, we had no idea what to expect! When we only had 30 trick-or-treaters and a huge bowl of leftover Nerds candy, I realized that I could have given each kid several boxes. Oops.

Will's Yoda costume ended up on Wallaby the bear.


Here you can see the sweat band and kimono (Plan B: Karate Kid costume) ready to go. That costume stayed on the couch all night, however.


Our favorite trick-or-treater was Ya Ya! She came by to see Will's costume, even if it was Plan C. Happy Halloween!

Halloween 2009: Plan C

Will doesn't like to play dress-up! Who knew. The plan was perfect: Will would wear his Yoda costume from last year and it would fit a lot better. We even had a Plan B in case he wouldn't wear the Yoda headpiece: Karate Kid! Well, the Yoda costume ended up on a stuffed animal (even after we enticed Will with some Yoda footage on DVD) and the Karate Kid ensemble ended up on the couch. My brilliant idea to roll up Will's jeans and goop up his hair resulted in a cute little photo shoot, though! This is Plan C: little Willy Zucko, everyone's favorite greaser. (He wouldn't keep his Converse on, but the rest of the outfit stayed intact.)