Our first hosted Thanksgiving (2008)

In addition to having a new house, the Dormaiers thought it would be fun to come to Seattle for Thanksgiving...which meant Dave and I hosted (and cooked) our very first Thanksgiving Dinner. "Ahhhhh!!! Ok, ok, we can do this," I thought. We just need to finish unpacking (yes, nearly 6 month later!), clean and figure out how to cook a turkey!! Noooo problem! :)

A friend of mine at work bought me a fancy schmancy meat thermometer and gave me a great turkey tutorial that included a butter massage and a aluminum breast plate (henceforth called the Breastplate of Righteousness"). Dave was pretty much in charge of the sweet potatoes and green bean casserole (yum!) and I discovered that I can cook a turkey and that fresh cranberry sauce is to die for! (and really easy to make). Overall, the night was a success!

We also figured out that we can house 14 (sleeping) bodies if we need to...people were spread out everywhere! Most of the kids were on a huge island of blow up mattresses in the family room while most of the adults were in the main part of the house. Everyone stayed nice and toasty between our wood burning stove and electric heat...talk about hybrid!

Asres and Dan watching a movie...


We didn't have a rack to put in the bottom of the pan for the turkey, so Kelley got to make the foil snake. Yes, lots of jokes were made...

Dave gets into one of the (many) books lying around...

Don't mess with my mother-in-law...she's got a knife!!

The happy turkey after it's butter massage.


Kody and Sam horsing around...

Who knew that chess would be such a big hit this year? Dawson, Jesse, Sam, Dave and Paul were nearly fanatics. Glad our board finally got some use!


Thanks to David who utilized his budding photography skills for these pictures! :)

A couple photos from Christmas

This year we had a pretty laid back Christmas. It seemed like everyone was out of town or unavailable, but it proved to be a special time for all. These are pics from Christmas night. Usually we go to Auntie Betty and Uncle Joe's for dinner with all the cousins and grandparents and all. Uncle Joe was sick and we missed them terribly, but we had a fun time at Nonnie and Papa's house. Mae kept us all entertained and we raided Nonnie's closet for our New Year's Celebration with the Menards (those pictures to come soon).

This photo needs a brief explaination...Sean has a fart program on his phone and Mae was making us all laugh with it (quite hysterically).

Think Swing 2008 Slideshow

Here is my first attempt at creating a slideshow in my editing software. I hope it works! Maybe later I can figure out how to add music to it. Anywhoo, this is from November 2008, it's the "best of" show. ;) (If you click on the little screen icon at the bottom, you can view it full screen...the photos look better if you do that)

Think Swing 2008

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: 2008 spokane)

www.brookwhitney.com

I'm still planning on posting Christmas pictures too. (one of these days)

Snow and Baby Paco

I'm an Auntie again!!! Baby Paco arrived on Friday, a gloriously snowy day. Although it took some doing, I finally saw a picture of the sweet little boy. Mary posted some pictures and I hope to add to those when I'm home this week! Good work Danelle! Get rested up so we can hold and love on ya'll. :) Welcome little Emmitt!

Mary is right...Christmas is here in all it's glory! I can't tell you how excited I was yesterday when they closed our office. I just kept saying, "thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus!" Yes, I was that excited. Not only because I have wedding pictures I needed to start editing, but because I was so happy to be able to enjoy a sunny, snowy day! I try to remind myself that this is not normal weather for Seattle and that I should enjoy it while I can. So, these pics are from last week...we got several more inches Saturday through Monday. I'll try to get Dave to email the pic we took of our snowman from his phone.





We do have more decorations up than just our tree, but we're pretty happy with our tree so we'll just show that...