Merry Christmas!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

We started off our festivities by spending the weekend in downtown Seattle. We stayed at the Westin, enjoying their "Heavenly" beds, excellent views, and close proximity to Pacific Place and the Pike Place Market. We received a$100 gift card to Pacific Place with our room...which of course was an excuse to do lots of shopping.

We need a bed like this at home...

The Seattle Space Needle from our room.

Our Christmas tradition (2 whole years now) is to eat ourselves silly at the Melting Pot. Last year we ate at the one in Pensacola, and this year, the one on Mercer Street in Seattle. Every course is fondue; and it's excellent: http://www.meltingpot.com/ They have restaurants in most big cities.

Seattle Center was decorated beautifully, including an old-fashioned Christmas Village:

On Christmas Eve we decided that we really needed to find some snow! We drove 2 1/2 hours Northeast to Mt.Baker with some of our friends to go skiing. We found plenty of snow...

The winding road up the mountain

Michael taking a break:

Next year's Christmas picture, I'm sure...

Jen and Kerry (Jen's on the snowboard.)

Our first Christmas in the new house... Stockings belonging to the four-legged furries of the house all stuffed by Santa and ready for the destroying.

We didn't have too many Christmas ornaments, so we just started sticking eveyone's Christmas cards in the tree. It worked out really well, especially since a lot of people sent pictures...our tree was full of our friends and family. (Note to Christmas letter writers...this doesn't work so well with letters...please send pictures next year.)

Maya waiting patiently to see what Santa brought:

Mmmmmmmm....yummy! A huge doggie bone!

Maya will be enjoying this for a while....(she didn't pay much attention to her new collar and doggie shampoo)



The kitties got play cubes...

...and LOTS of catnip toys.

Henry enjoying his cube:

Our friend Terica hand-made excellent Christmas stockings for us. The best part about this was the gifts her and husband Brett gave us WITH the stockings. Brett makes some EXCELLENT smoked salmon, and they gave us season passes to thier tour boat, Deception Pass Tours: www.deceptionpasstours.com (Please note, if you visit anytime this year, you'll most likely be going on the boat with us!)

After the kitties had their fill of catnip, they decided that taking a Christmas nap by the fireplace was in order:

The carnage of too much wrapping paper:

The rest of Christmas will of course include Renee's Papita, some slow roasted prime rib and a movie or two.

Merry Christmas to everyone! We miss you all and look forward to visiting and hosting you over the coming year.