Christmas Decorations

I have to say that this Thanksgiving Break has been fun HoWeVer....I am exhausted! We spent our entire weekend shopping, cleaning and putting up decorations both inside and out! As I sit here now I am very pleased with how the house looks! I love the outside and the inside is gorgeous! Taylor and Maddie have enjoyed every minute of it. Taylor has especially been excited about decorating - Maddie really could care less! She always is saying that everything looks beautiful and pretty but she hasn't helped much or cared if anything is in her room. Taylor on the other hand has found every little decoration that I haven't used in the house to place in her room. There are so many knick knacks and what not in her room that I crack up every time I go in there!

Proud Taylor in her very decorated room!

I had to do a close up of this...Take note to the 4 snow globes and the basket filled with Princess fruit snacks for her to share with her friends when they come over.

Seriously? Could you cram any more on the bookshelf? :)

The girls have also been having lots of fun playing with our Rudolph hat. Dave bought this hat in Leavenworth the day he proposed to me (Ahh...) over 9 years ago. Taylor has invented a "Santa" game where Rudolph wears the hat and "Santa" carries a garbage sack around and fills it up with presents and then Rudolph guides him around to the different "houses" to deliver presents. Bless my mom...she is the only one who will play it with her for more than 5 minutes!

Finally, I have to share with you what the outside of our house looks like. I LOVE it!! Dave did a great job!

Wishing everyone a wonderful first week in December! I am sure I will be back soon with more December fun from all of us!

Thanksgiving

A Happy belated Thanksgiving to our dear family and friends! We had a lovely day of togetherness...Dave's family came to Olympia to celebrate our first Thanksgiving in the new house. It was so nice to be able to cook and throw a party at our new place! Everyone had a great time (especially the cousins!).

The girls sat like this for almost the entire Macy's Day Parade!

You will notice that Maddie spent most of her Thanksgiving in her jammies- unlike her sister!

Taylor was very excited to wear this dress to Thanksgiving! (Notice in later pictures that she changes into her jammies....)

Drew, Luke and Taylor (Maddie did NOT want her picture taken!)

After we ate Taylor realized that she didn't eat any turkey so she went ahead and ate this...I almost gagged watching her eat it...GROSS!

Maddie had to hold her head up to eat her ice cream otherwise she might have fallen asleep!

Luke and Taylor playing!

Luke, Maddie and Taylor (notice the jammies change again!)

My mom drove from Everett Thanksgiving night to go shopping with me at 3:30 in the morning! We have been doing this for the last few years and she was nice enough to join me again today! We got some great deals...I was pleased with the whole thing! Needless to say, my mom is already asleep (it's 7:50 p.m.) and I am headed down to bed now. I will be back soon with Christmas decorating pictures soon! Love to all~ Heather

The Girls and Everett

The girls are having a great time in Everett...Dave and I officially miss them like crazy! It was nice to have a few days to ourselves but now everyday life just doesn't seem the same without them! They have done so much that they are going to want to stay with Grandma again real soon! Long walks to the park, eating at Taco Bell (a favorite of theirs!), the library, visiting Nana and Emilie, a birthday party, visiting Connie, meeting John for the first time and eating cheetoh's at Grandma Oh-Oh's and Grandpa Woof-Woof's! We pick them up tomorrow afternoon and are taking mom out for a thank you dinner before we all head back to our respective homes. Katie sent me these pictures of the girls today...they couldn't have come at a better time- just when Dave and I were wanting to see them! John is oh, so cute!

Ugly Holiday Sweater Party!

Hi Everyone!

Dave and I are enjoying some time together this weekend alone at the house! Yes, I said alone...the girls were invited by my mom to come and stay with her this weekend. Normally, she comes to our house every Monday and watches the girls and takes them to Ballet. Due to Thanksgiving the girls don't have ballet and so she thought it would be fun to watch them at her house until Tuesday so that they could be with Emilie as well. So, here I sit on a Sunday morning, drinking coffee with no interruptions. It is nice but quite odd!

Dave and I had a really fun day yesterday. We invited friends over for the ever so exciting apple cup and then later in the evening headed to dinner with friends and then to an ugly holiday sweater party to kick off the season. We had a lot of fun and I can't remember laughing as much as I did last night.

So cute...Dave was still celebrating the COUG WIN!!

Here I am...looking oh, so good!

Together with some of our greatest friends..the Kovals and the Gentrys.

My girlfriends and I...Lorraine, Chrissy, Krista and Jen

Dave and I are heading out soon to go and do some Christmas shopping for the girls while they are away and then I think we are both planning on taking a NAP! I am looking forward to a relaxing day. We are so lucky (and spoiled) to have such great family who love and adore our children!

Wishing everyone a great (short) week! I will be back soon with a Thanksgiving report!

Finally!

I am feeling quite proud of myself right now....I finally figured out how to "decorate" our blog! I have only been trying for a few months now. I found a great website that took me step by step. Not bad for a first try! Enjoy!

Just a quick hello...

Hi Everyone!

I don't have much but just wanted to say Hello from the Myers! We are enjoying a rare day off in the middle of the week tomorrow. Our first since school started so Dave and I are thrilled to be at home! I had a really great Veteran's Day assembly at my school today that I think all the kids enjoyed. Our school was even on the King 5 12 o'clock news (and I think the 5 0'clock as well). We have a very high amount of students with at least one parent serving in the military so they did a feature on our school. I didn't see it but I heard it was neat.

We are planning on taking the girls to Madagascar 2 tomorrow for a special treat. They don't know it yet so it will be fun to go and surprise them. Then, it's back to the grind! I am going Christmas shopping with some girlfriends all day Saturday at the Woodburn Outlets in Portland and I am really looking forward to it. Other than that, our week is relatively a calm one.

Dave's family came to visit this past weekend and we had such a great time hanging out with them. The cousins had a blast with one another and Taylor especially enjoyed it because she got to: "Have two people follow her around and do everything she says". Good Lord that girl cracks me up!

My grandpa goes in for a cat scan on Wednesday (he has been waiting this whole time for insurance approval) so we should hopefully know more by the end of this week in regards to what is going on with him. He and my grandma are in high spirits and are enjoying doing their regular every day activities.

I will leave you (which has now turned into a longer post...) with a few pictures of the girls who helped me make some snicker doodles tonight. We were using the mixer and Taylor was very interested in the numbers on the side of it. She really wanted to know what the number ten was like. You will see she soon discovered what happens when you turn a mixer on high speed after putting 2 1/2 cups of flour into the mixer! Boy did she make us all laugh! I felt bad because I think she got a bit embarrassed by the whole thing!

The mixer..hmm...what happens if I go to the #10?

Oh, right. Got it.

Maddie decided to come and "help" after the mixer fiasco!

Have a wonderful rest of the week!

Welcome Baby John!

John Richard Bjella was born this morning at 5:18 a.m.

He weighed in at 7 lbs. 12 ounces and is 20 1/2 inches long.

He and his mommy are doing well!



Congrats to the new little family! We love you!

Trick-or-Treat!

What a fun Halloween we had this year! I only had to work yesterday until 10:30 so I picked the girls up from their Halloween extravaganza that they had at the daycare (according to the girls they had lots of dancing!) and we headed home to what I hoped would be a nap for all three of us. That was certainly wishful thinking seeming that we were about 10 minutes into lying down together and Maddie leans over and says: "Mom, Mom, I am too cited to sleep!" So, we got up and just hung out. I can't remember a Halloween that I wasn't running all over the place so this was a fantastic way to spend our day! Throughout the afternoon, family began to slowly show up for a visit with the girls; my mom, Dave's mom and Jerry. The girls started to "roam" around the house around 5:15 and began doing a lot of peering out the window in hopes that it would soon be dark. They finally got their wish and around 6:30 we headed out to start our trick or treating. Dave had to work at a football game last night for Yelm so the girls trick or treated first at our house so that he could experience that and then we headed up the road to get our friends the Glocks. Maddie was tickled when she discovered that Addie had the same costume as her! Taylor and Maddie loved the whole adventure and our first few house stops were priceless! Taylor would shout to us as she was leaving a house how many pieces of candy she had gotten and Maddie truly thought she was going to get to eat each piece of candy as she received it. Her little fists were full until we convinced her that it was okay to save some of the candy for later! Taylor stayed up with the big kids the entire time we were walking and little Miss Maddie tried her best to stay up too. Her little legs couldn't carry her quite fast enough! We had been trick or treating for about an hour or so when all of a sudden both girls looked up at me and Maddie said: "I am so tired Momma" and within minutes Taylor was stating that she thought she needed to go home. When we arrived home Maddie could barely get her costume off and was fast asleep! Taylor however got her second wind and found it truly enjoyable to answer the door and pass out candy. She ended up having a very late dinner with my mom and I! The girls will enjoy their candy for a few days and then tomorrow night I will have Great Mrs. Pumpkin visit our house in the night and take their left over candy for little boys and girls who didn't get any this year. She will leave them a little present in it's place. I know I am an evil mom....But I do want them to be healthy kids that have all their teeth in place :)

Tinker Bell and Ariel as happy as can be!

This is one of my favorite of Maddie!

Taylor

The girls walking ahead of everyone else...all grown up!

Our neighborhood friends! Addy and Ellie

Onto other things going on in our lives. We received some sad news this week about Grandpa Woof Woof. He went in to have a lump removed from his neck this past Monday and received word that he has cancer. We are of course all in panic and sad modes right now. We know nothing further than the fact that he has cancer. We don't know if it has spread or how extensive it is. He will go in for further testing on Tuesday of next week. Anyone reading this, we would love your prayers for him during this time. Thanks.

Katie has still not had "Little Man" yet! She is quite the trooper. My mom said she was over visiting yesterday morning and was in the best mood but most definitely ready to have the baby. We are hoping she will call us any minute to tell us to jump in the car and head to Everett. We are all very anxious to meet him and to learn of his name :)

Wishing everyone a happy weekend! So sorry for the very LONG post!