Christmas and the vacations that followed!

Hello there . . . I know, it's been a while, but once you read this blog you'll realize why.  I also caution everyone reading this - there will be an absurd amount of pictures in this post!! It covers a whole month, and I can't help but post lots of pix of all the fun we had during Christmas holidays! So here it goes . . .

We were at the Randalls on Christmas Eve - they celebrate everything on Christmas eve, opening presents, yummy dinner, we did  it all (it's a Norwegian thing). So the whole family was together all day Saturday, we had lots of fun! Harlow LOVES to open presents, we let her open the dress she's wearing early and ever since that day all she wanted to do was open all the presents, so she was in heaven on Christmas eve!

Ashton with his new snowmobiling helmet!

Nate got some $$ for a snowboarding trip . . . 

So he pretended he was a baller!

 

Harlow got a dolly and stroller, she was obsessed with them . . .until she ran to fast and rammed into the chair and her eye started bleeding, poor kid! needless to say, she's much more careful when she pushed the stroller now!

This is my NEW professional series kitchen aid mixer!!! I was so happy!

Aurora with her new guitar!

 So that was our MN Christmas . . .then on Christmas day we flew out to Seattle, the stop on our way up to Victoria.  We were catching the Clipper ferry up to Victoria, but it didn't run on Christmas day, so we stayed the night in a nice hotel right downtown.  Our Christmas dinner was room service which turned out to be a gross chicken caesar wrap and a mediocre burger . . .but we still had fun!  Actually, it wasn't much fun, Harlow doesn't do well when she sleeps in the same room as us, so it was a pretty horrible night, I think Brandon and I maybe got 3 hours of sleep the whole night, ughhhh not fun!

Gettin' all her wiggles out after a long flight!

 On Christmas day we hopped on the Clipper and ferried over to Victoria! It felt good to be home, but also kind of weird since my parents weren't home this Christmas (they're in Myanmar on a humanitarian mission for our church) and  we celebrated in their condo since the house was sold in May :( But it's right downtown, so that was nice, we walked everywhere . . . when it wasn't raining!

again with the presents . . Harlow had to help everyone unwrap them!

Auntie Lauren got Harlow her very own Trunkie! It's the cutest little carry on suitcase for kids! Hers looks like a ladybug 

She loves her Great-Grandpa, especially his nose!

Having fun with Great-Grandma!

She LOVED Storm, the cat! She chased Storm everywhere, and Storm was so patient, never got upset with her!

Getting some lovin' from Uncle Taylor!

For those of you who aren't from Victoria . . . here's a little taste of what my beautiful hometown looks like! 

Harlow was chasing this seagull all over Fisherman's warf!

Auntie Pahnia!!

 That was some of the fun we had in Victoria! Then we took a ferry to Vancouver where we met my friend Brittany, who drove us down to Seattle where we were flying out the next day.  We stayed the night at Kelly's house (my old roomie!) and then played in downtown seattle the next day before our flight.  We went to Pike Place Market, ate at our fave restaurant, Wild Ginger and had lots of fun!! Then we hopped on the light rail to the airport and flew off to Phoenix!

It ended up being cheaper for us to do one way flights to seattle, phx and then home to MN rather than doing a return flight mn to seattle.  Weird, I know, but it gave us an excuse to go to Phoenix to see all our friends, and we needed to find new renters for our house since our old tenant lost his job and moved out on Dec. 31st.  So we got to phoenix hopeful that we'd find someone quickly . . . but that didn't happen!  I ended up staying until Jan. 20th figuring out all our house stuff.  We sold all our furniture (since we had previously rented it furnished) and went to work finding a new tenants! Long story short, we eventually found some awesome renters, and in between all the stressfullness we had lots of fun playing with friends and cousins!

oh, did I mention the weather was like 75 degrees or higher! it was awesome!

Harlow had her first haircut from Cousin Tish!!! She looks so cute!

one of her boyfriends, James!

Her other boyfriend, Miles!

action sequence! I love their little faces as they go down the slides!

Love this one!

another action sequence . . . this time they're making out . . baby style!

If you haven't seen the video of them kissing yet . . here it is!! 

and a third action sequence . . . Harlow is now obsessed with using a fork!

having fun in the backyard with a puddle from the sprinkler system!

A bath full of cousins!!

I warned you that it would be a lot of pictures . . .and it was! Hope you enjoyed our last month through our pics, overall we had an awesome vacation! It was just a little stressful the last 2 weeks Harlow and I were in AZ trying to sort out all the house stuff without Brandon (he had to go back to school).  But we're all home now, it was like an 80 degree change when we came back to this -1 degree weather, but it's still good to be home!