Man, I am so far behind.

I keep meaning to update this thing, but everytime it seems like too much trouble. So, I've just got to force myself to do it, because I really love sharing all these pictures and then coming back and looking at them all.

So, since I haven't updated since we decorated Jason's mom's house for Christmas, I must say that Christmas and New Year's and everything in between was great.

For Halloween, a coworker of mine gave me a mini pumpkin that he said he had planned on decorating, but never got around to it. So it decorated the front desk for Halloween and Christmas, and when Jason and I came into the office the first weekend before December and put up the Christmas tree, we painted the pumpkin with some sharpies and whiteout, and put it on his desk.


Jason even made it a little body out of a paper cup, some cardstock, and a coffee stirrer.

Miscellaneous things that happened during the Holiday season:

Jason and I got our picture taken with the Mariner Moose.


We got our first snowfall on December 13th, which was the same day as the Luminaries walk around Greenlake. The put luminaries all around the lake, and there are carolers and hot chocolate, and people walk around covered in lights.



Jason, Chloe, Padon, Mom, and I came downtown on the next day on the 14th for the Jingle Bell Run which raises money for the Arthritis Foundation. We did not end up participating in the race (but we did donate money! Thanks, Mom!) but we had a great time downtown riding the carousel and seeing the Sheraton Hotel's gingerbread houses.




Every year there's a competition between the chef's to build an entirely edible gingerbread house, each one designed by a different local architecture firm, that fits the year's theme. This year the theme was Superheroes.




There were some really great looking houses, but unfortunately I didn't take any pictures other that what I thought looked like the worst one. :P

So, you'll just have to take my word for it.


Then we walked down to the Pike Place Market for lunch and ate at Kell's before walking back to the car and heading home.


Every year my work participates in some holiday charity thing, whether it's collecting toys for the Toys for Tots (Marines) or Toy 'N' Joy (Salvation Army) toy drives, or supporting a family through the Youth Eastside Services organization or others. Since the economy took a dive this year and things are tough for some families already, we didn't want to ask our employees to go out and buy toys for other families when they're already being asked to donate to the United Way fund and buy presents for their own families. So we volunteered with the Salvation Army's Toy 'N' Joy drive organizing and sorting all of the toys that come in from donations. They were then set up on tables organized by sex and age, for parents to come in and "shop" for presents for their families.

We signed up for two days in four hour shifts and Jason and I worked on the second day. It seemed like most of the work must have been done in the first day, because they didn't have much to do other than sort toys and there were quite a few volunteers already doing that. Two of my coworkers left because they had work to do on their site and they weren't needed at the Toy 'N' Joy. But Jason and I and another of my coworkers stayed to do the miscellaneous things that needed doing. My coworker, Andrew, put together a couple kids bikes, and Jason and I made paper chains with a group of college kids. It was real exciting. :) But we had fun. When we finished hooking them all together, we strung them around the warehouse where it was all taking place.




At one point the hole in Jason's pants got bigger, so he taped it shut with the packaging tape we were using to string up the paper chains.


Of course, we were awesome.


We were expecting a large snowstorm that day, but it didn't really begin until the evening in Seattle, whereas it had been snowing like mad in every city surrounding us. But there was lots of snow the next day, so it was a lot of fun to walk around, and see all the stuck buses.