Christmas Celebration

The trees, decorations and lights were taken down many weeks ago, and I'm just now getting our Christmas photos posted! Oh well - at least it's not Valentine's day yet! And it's never too late to celebrate the birth of our Lord, of course!

We spent the Christmas holiday enjoying lots of special family time!

Christmas Eve Morning with Brian's side of our family:

What? Uncle Greg's phone isn't one of my Christmas gifts?!

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Christmas Eve Evening with both sides of our family!

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After a beautiful service which included candle lighting, we let Owen try blowing out a candle. He loved it - and we relit the candle several times as he kept asking to do it "again" !

Christmas Eve Morning with Linnea's side of the family:

It's Christmas morning? What does that mean?

Stockings! And mine was filled with tractors, trucks and cars - my favorite!

Playing cars on my new "cars" table from grandma & grandpa

I still love stacking!

Opening the many generous presents from my loving family

Celebrating the gift of baby #2

Evidence of an emerging "baby-bump"

Lots of laughter and silliness!

Proudly wearing our new OPH sweatshirts, supporting Blake & Angie's restaurant in Puyallup

As our Christmas gift to Owen, we converted our bonus room into a playroom! This playroom has already proven to be a wonderful blessing allowing for hours of fun, and with a sliding door to our backyard we anticipate lots of inside and outside play this spring/summer!

After all of the wonderful Christmas festivities, we spent a very low-key and relaxing New Year's weekend in Black Butte Ranch with Linnea's parents. A perfect way to wrap up 2010, and kick off 2011!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of our dear family and friends!

Think Pink

I'm not sure how time got away from me like this, but I'm totally behind on my blogging! I have photos from the holidays I'll post over the weekend (it's still January, so it's not too late, right?). And in the meantime...a fun little announcement from the Gaskins Family

It's a Girl!

December Happenings

We love the Christmas season! Decorations, lights, festivities, opportunity to be with family and friends, all in anticipation of celebrating the birth of our Lord!

Our month kicked-off with a trip to Seattle. Linnea had a Christmas Party for her work, which was a perfect excuse to make a weekend trip and see family/friends in the area! We were having so much fun that unfortunately we forgot to take out the camera during the weekend. Darn!

We've enjoyed many opportunities to spend time with friends in the area through the month, and celebrated at a 1st birthday for a sweet friend Emmaline!

For Christmas shopping - we took Owen with us to Toys R Us, and let him play and explore. The perfect way to find out what he was drawn to, and such an easy age - we could buy the presents in front of him, and he will still be surprised on Christmas! Owen LOVES anything having to do with trains/cars/fire trucks/school buses, and basically anything related to "transportation". He also enjoyed "roaring" at the dinosaurs!

Unfortunately this month also came with a stretch of sickness for Owen. What started as a fever turned into a head-to-toe rash (according to our pediatrician, this virus is something very common for toddlers?) and basically resulted in a 5 day stretch of a very miserable and uncomfortable baby. Poor thing! Hard on parents, too. We want more than anything to make it better for him, and found ourselves exhausted just trying to keep him calm, comfortable, and entertained all while being held-up at home for days on end. So glad that's long behind us (until the next bug, I guess!) and we can enjoy the Christmas festivities adding gratitude for our health to our list of blessings this season!

Wishing you and your family a blessed Christmas!

Toys R Us, and loving the trains

Happy 1st Birthday, Emmaline!

Our sick boy...

And how did we keep him entertained?...

We let him sweep the kitchen!

And after 15 minutes of this (eternity in the attention span of a toddler) we quickly decided to get a broom his own size for Christmas! Gotta encourage this helpful behavior, of course!

Watching the garbage truck make it's way down our street



This is my "pick my battles" photo!

On morning #4, after many hard and sad days, and little/no appetite, all Owen really wanted for breakfast was a piece of brownie. After insisting that he should have oatmeal, I realized...this is a moment to pick my battles, and yes - Owen ate brownie for breakfast (and 1/2 a pear, thankfully!). Oh well - it was worth the smiles on his sweet face during such a hard week!

Thanksgiving Blessings

We had a wonderful and special Thanksgiving - full of celebration and gratitude for family and all of God's many blessings in our lives.

For the past nine years, both of our families have joined together for Thanksgiving. What a blessing to share the holiday together as a united family! With some of our siblings married and starting new families of their own, it is not uncommon that some siblings might be celebrating the holiday with other family. However this year for Thanksgiving, all of our siblings were here in Portland together - what a unique, special, and celebrated gift!

And in celebration of family, we enjoyed the opportunity to share some special family news of our own...Owen is going to be a big brother! We are due with baby #2 on May 17th! We announced the news by literally having Owen in a "big brother" shirt - and enjoyed the chance to celebrate in person with family during the weekend.

Other weekend highlights included special quality time with each family, celebrating Jamey's birthday, cheering on the UW Husky football team as they took on CAL, and our annual tradition of kicking off the Christmas season by attending the Singing Christmas Tree!

We hope you and your family had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend celebration also!

Brian's brother Greg, sister Jenny, and brother-in-law Jamey

Owen in his "big brother" shirt!

Linnea, mom Julie & grandma Marion

Angie & Landon

Two mama's and our boys

Linnea's brother Brent and grandma Marion


Family photo after the Thanksgiving feast!

Sister-in-law Amy & nephew Landon

Brian & Owen with the "Williams Boys"
minus baby Landon who was sleeping!

Building a tower with Brian & Amy...followed by saying "uh oh" with a smile in anticipation of knocking the tower over!

Linnea's parents and their grandsons!

Halloween Fun

It was a fun Halloween with Owen, even if he didn't really understand what the excitement was all about! He enjoyed being dressed in his Dalmatian costume (which made the costume a winner for me!) and seeing the other kids, but he doesn't understand the whole "candy" part of Halloween yet (no rush on that!). In part, perhaps, because he's really never had candy. He has "treats" occasionally - but that is usually a bite of dessert or cookie (and he knows his cookies - as you'll see in the photo below!).

Our Halloween weekend started with a party at Brian's work, where the kids could trick-or-treat around the offices, and then end up in the conference room for some treats & goodies. Owen is in the toddler stage of enjoying to put things back (love it!), and during the trick-or-treating, someone would hold out a basket of candy. Curious, he'd take one. Maybe shake it. And then nicely put it back. Such a sweetie, and so fun to watch! We know these days are numbered, though. I'm sure year he'll be ripping into the candy!

On Halloween itself we headed over to a local outdoor shopping mall where they had a festival for the kids. It was fun to see all the kids (and adults!) in costumes. For the evening, instead of trick-or-treating this year Owen enjoyed helping hand out candy to the neighborhood kids as they came by. It was a great weekend, and a fun kick-off to the holiday season!

Not sure what he's looking at - but I love the look of surprise (or shock? or excitement?) on his face!

Couldn't resist including this photo. Makes a mommy's heart melt!

Such a sweet little kiss - I just wish you could see his precious face!

And for fun...a couple of pictures from last year, Owen's first Halloween!