Christmas #3

At Paul's sister's house for family Christmas and Len's birthday celebration.


Paul and Maddie had a great time playing with the box that her present came in...we just getting both of them boxes next year!


Happy birthday Leonard!

Christmas #2

Christmas morning together


Santa brought me gorgeous sapphire earings - a HUGE surprise!


And a mini-crockpot from my parents in California!!!


Paul got outfitted for a new season of snowboarding...


...and new tools!


We had a fabulous Christmas morning together relaxing, making breakfast, taking the dog to the park, and enjoying the wonder of Christmas.

Christmas #1

The Ratliff Family Christmas
A gift exchange at dinner in Bellevue. It was so wonderful to spend time with family, especially my aunt and uncle from out of town.

All our Christmas celebrations...

If you know me well, you know I have a lot of family and a lot of Christmas celebrations...I don't think I will have time to post them all right now, so stay tuned for more.

I cooked a whole chicken!

This intimidated me...a whole chicken.


But I conquered it! I forgot to take a picture after it was done roasting...we gobbled it up too quickly. Now my next challenge is a turkey...maybe next year.

The story of the tree

Trecking through the forest to find the perfect tree. We knew this one was obviously too big...


...so when we found this tree, it looked so much smaller than all the rest. It's under 12 feet, right?


Wrong. After we cut it down, it looked a bit large, so we trimmed it down a few feet.


We also had to cut off a few feet once we got it home and then again after we brought it inside and it hit the ceiling...oops! Not to mention the branches were so long that they shot out over the couch and were crunched against the wall. So, we got to literally trim the tree! Here is the finished product...

Leavenworth

We had such a great time in Leavenworth watching the tree lighting. What a magical town! Paul and I love taking pictures with all the characters and there were definitely a bunch of them.




And of course, the tree lighting was magical, romantic, and memorable.