Happy Birthday Papou!

Since Papou's has a big birthday this year (80th!  can you believe it?  most people can't...) we decided that we should all to Colorado to celebrate with him...   Plus we were looking for a good reason to use our new suitcases :)   AND... we flew on a small plane going there with mom, Uncle John and Aunt Jennifer.  So small that Caits and I got our own row (no adults!)... well mom was across the aisle so not too far away.  

The whole trip was a pretty fun adventure... we got hang with our cousins Leo and TJ which was super fun.. they are pretty crazy and made us laugh lots all weekend long.  Our favorite day was when mom and dad went skiing and yiayia and papou took Leo, Caits and I to the park to play in the snow, then to the big gondola at Beaver Creek!  We rode all the way up the mountain and had beautiful views the whole way.  TJ is an awesome skier and he went with the "big kids" (ie. my parents) to the mountain to show them his stuff, they seemed like they had a good time too :)  Then that night we celebrated papou's birthday (with CAKE!!)  I think he had fun and we for sure did!

And we got to see my best bud Sammy who lives in CO now.   He looks just the same and it a big brother now (like I'm a big sister).

Bikes and parks...

You know how winter goes around here... rainy, cloudy, rainy...the about every 3 weeks the sun come out and we head for the streets!  We love riding our bike and playing at the parks near our house.  This spinning thing was a new "feature" at a playground nearby and as soon as we saw it, I tried to climb in and get it to spin, Caitlyn on the other hand climbed straight to the top... so not to be out down i climbed right up and joined her...  :)    

We thought this was a pretty silly picture too...  our helmets are pretty smiley :)

what's all this white stuff?!?

Turns out snow is pretty fun to play in.. it was even more fun to have snow ball fights with Cam though!!

and of course we had to do the token snow angel :)

to ski..or not to ski

I went with the "not to ski" approach this time around...  I got all geared up but nerves got the best of me!  maybe next time... :)

snowshoe outing

While Caits, Megs, Cam and I had fun playing at home, mom, dad, Aunt Terri, Aunt Jennifer and Uncle John to yiayia out on a little snow shoe outing...  or as I call it a snow walk.  From what they said it was pretty and fun - I told mom I wanted to go along next time!!

ice skating and train rides

We had a few fun adventures our selves while we visited the "snow" house (aka. the Sunriver house)... my favorite day was when we went ice skating followed by a train ride!  I was super excited to go ice skating but got a little bit nervous when I got there.  It took me a bit but I was brave and decided to give it a whirl... turns out it's fun!!!  

We kept seeing this cute little train circling the ice rink while we were iceskating so we could resist going for a little spin on it ourselves.  Choo-choo!

Christmas 2012

So, Caitlyn and I got to have Christmas at our house this year... which was pretty exciting. It started out just being me and Caitlyn (and mom and dad of course :).  Then Granny came to see us, then Megan and Cam (and Aunt Terri and Uncle Neil), then.. Yiayia and Papou came AND uncle John and Aunt Jennifer.. by the time Christmas was over - we had a full house!!    We were just a little excited to come down Christmas morning and find the tree loaded with gifts!!    ... and Santa was pretty awesome - he brought us exactly what we asked for AND he ate our cookies too :)  Santa ROCKS.

check out these awesome reindeer antlers... (shortly after this pic was taken, we couldn't find them... you guessed it - Bruno ate them... and no, you don't want to know how we know that)

Caits and I had some fun "music" lessons from dad along with our friends Bailey and Parker... you should hear us rock out "Jingle Bells"!!

This was one of our favorite things to do leading up to Christmas - each day we took turns picking and "ornament" and putting it on the tree until it was all decorated with the final star going on the top on Christmas eve.

Making the perfect cookies for Santa!!  (he loved them of course :)

no coal in these stockings - we must of have been girls this year :)

of all the gifts, the magic wand was definitely one of our favorites, Caits put spells on just about everything in the house!!

LIttle kickers....

Caits and I get to take our first class together... it's called "Little Kickers" - and it's pretty fun :)  Since I'm older, I get to show her the ropes and what to do (it didn't take long for her to figure things out!!)

Supposedly it's a soccer class but really we just run around, play games and kick some soccer balls in the air occasionally :)

Merry Christmas from PDX

O Christmas Tree...

Well, it's become a bit of an annual tradition to cut down our Christmas day, so this year we braved the weather (yes, it's been cold and wet for about a month straight) to go to our favorite tree farm in search of the perfect tree... after a quick train ride and not so quick wander through the trees we landed on the perfect tree :)  It was so perfect that Caits was upset that we cut it down... apparently she's a bit of a tree hugger at heart haha!  I had to explain to her that it's our CHRISTMAS tree!

Dad did the hard work of sawing it down and carrying to the road where it could be picked up brought to our car...  we contributed by drinking hot chocolate and picking out the perfect wreath!!