The Bridge

We decided on New Years Day to take a walk over the Narrows Bridge. We have been intending to do this since we moved to the Harbor in the summer. It was a sunny, but freezing day. Most people were probably still hung over from the night before, so the traffic was super-light. We saw boats, divers, seals, tons of birds and the most gorgeous view of, {Brian's girlfriend}, Rainier. Mt. Rainier that is. We will definitely be biking over this bridge a lot this summer.








I love that when we drive over this bridge, we all know that our home is just minutes away.

HELP!(ers)

I love our 2 little helpers. I'm all for letting them help out in most tasks or chores around the house. It sometimes, OK, almost always, makes my job 100 times more difficult, but it is always worth it. Life lessons are being taught here people! And more often than not, I can be very patient.

Yesterday we made our first batch of Christmas cookies. I can honestly say my cookies have never been decorated like these ones before. We had a ball. (And I reminded myself of that fact about million times as I cleaned up the gigantic mess!)

Santa + Fire Trucks

This week our city had several open houses at local fire stations. With Santa too. Ummmmm...could this event be more perfect for our family??? Oh, we sure talk a lot about Santa around here. We've even had the opportunity to see him a few times. (Though there were some tears involved.) We are quite fascinated with that jolly dude though so we keep on trying.

But FIRE TRUCKS, did someone say FIRE TRUCKS? We're there.

Those firemen were super-nice. The kids got to 'drive' the big trucks and crawl all around inside of them. Those friendly firemen didn't even care about the candy-cane sticky fingers. So much fun. Such good memories.

Now I am trying to convince Brian to be a fireman. (Maybe I should chat with Santa.) Because HELLO the uniforms. Too much information. Nah, we're all friends here right?!?!

Traditions

Christmas traditions are the bomb dot com. Brian and I are having a lot of fun creating Swisher family traditions. Of course we made the paper-chain countdown. Do the kids know what the heck they are counting the days for??? Probably not. But they do enjoy ripping a link off every night.


One fun thing we are trying this year is a Book-Advent thingy. (Feel free to quote me on that one.) I got the idea from another blog and loved it. You see, as a former Kindergarten teacher, I have tons of books just waiting to be read by these 2. (Organized by themes, holidays and seasons of course.) Anyway, I used 22 books I already had and added a couple of new ones to the mix. I wrapped them all and put them on display. Each night the twins choose one and we read it together before bed. They love this!



I plan on using the same books from year to year, but the surprise will be which one they get every night.


I heart books.