Sit right back and you’ll hear a tale. (Actually a couple)

 

Our tale starts on December 31 2012. IE New Years Eve.

Place:  Portland OR.

People involved: MNM Miller-ites Aunt Natasha

Our first stop was the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.  Taden made a New Years hat and Lilly dressed up as a woodland creature. Thomas made friends with a  stroller and Maranda remained friends with her sister.

Next stop was Red Robin were our kids chanted Happy New Years and we ate mostly amazing food.

 

To end our journey the kids watched most of the Lion King with popcorn.

Our second journey took us up north of Seattle to a place called Stanwood where we experienced our first real winter snow and got to experience what Gilligan and the crew felt like.

Place: Stanwood WA, and Orcas Island WA. (The place you go by ferry and make sure not to follow the weekday schedule on the weekend)

People Involved: MNM Miller-ites. Kristen and Nathan Frongner, and kids, and Stacy Henn, and Jade Canafrican Schwartzberg. (some of Maranda’s roommates from BYU Idaho that we hadn’t seen since 2006)

Isaac was very social and seemed to like us quite well.

Our children got along really well with the Frongner children and even pretended well together.

While the girls went to Sea Tac to pick up Stacy Nathan and I had babysitting duty. He put in Tangled, and here they danced to it.  

 

We arrived from Stanwood to Anacortes not knowing what the weather would be like.  It turned out beautiful. Here we are at the ferry station.  We stopped to get fresh cider on the way.

I have never taken a picture of a men’s bathroom before but this intrigued me. It reminded of what a cow might feel like.

Our kids loved the beginning of the ferry ride but most of it was spent fighting over who could pretend to play the one an only video game. Michael was the most excited because he had never been on a ferry and even though no whales were seen.  We found out that Orcas Island isn’t named for seeing whales, it is in the shape of an Orca Whale.

We arrived at Orcas Island thinking we could stroll around the town. We started strolling until a nice guy told us how far town was.  It was 10 miles away. 2 strange men were kind enough to offer us a ride in what looked like a hippie van. We were planning on going back 2 hours later but we read the wrong schedule. We read the weekday schedule instead of the weekend. We ended up being on the island for 4 hours.  It was a long day but it was quite an amazing adventure being stuck on an island with 5 kids under the age of 5.  We solved the problem by buying hot chocolate and trying to watch a movie on Nathan’s phone. 

Some of the beauty we were able to see.

 

A tale of three Christmases and a late winter wonderland.

 

For every Christmas festivity you need family, food, and fantabulous presents. Our family got to have all of this repeated three times.

The first tale was a Christmas Eve celebration with Grandma and Grandpa Ripp, Uncle Anthony and Aunt Jennifer, cousin Austin, and cousin Brooklyn and Uncle Ben.

1) For the food, Maranda and I combine foods from both families old traditions and this is what we had.

 

 

 

The fantabulous gifts.

1) A rock star microphone for our kids to sing into as demonstrated below.

 

2) Grandma Ripp’s fantabulous gift was the final Dalmation Mcdonald’s Toy making 101 individual Dalmation’s in her collection.

3) Grandma and Grandpa gave each kid a stocking full of presents.

4) Aunt Jennifer and Uncle Anthony gave Lilly 3 Disney princess dress up costumes. It was a big hit for both genders.

 

5) Taden received a spy kit.

 

Thomas got a Thomas ball.

6) Taden and Lilly made homemade Christmas gifts with Maranda.

The 2nd tale was spent Christmas Eve and morning as a family with hot chocolate Christmas Eve followed by fantabulous presents from Grandma and Grandpa Miller and parents.

We had hot chocolate Christmas Eve.

Taden’s most fantabulous present was his Ben Ten Swampfire Costume.

The third and final tale was spent Christmas Day where we got to see Uncle Karlson, Grandpa Dave, Grandma Laurie, and Aunt Natasha.

Waking and and walking in a late winter wonderland.

We had our first real snow of the year on our way home from our friends house north of Seattle. (More will follow on that adventure the next blog post.) We were travelling home and went from going 70 to 20 in downtown Seattle where the biggest flurries I have seen in many years came pouring down. Well that was just the beginning.

We only got a few inches but it was enough to make an amazing powdery snow man complete with bow tie.

After our snow man was made the weather people predicted that we would get between 6- 12” overnight. We didn’t think it would happen as it was mostly sunny all day. We woke up to a surprise which is demonstrated below.

What you get from living in paradise!

You learn to walk and also to walk on water




You get to meet John Denver and hear him sing while he is accompanied by an angel.



You get to experience flowers in their true beauty. (Both by smelling and by seeing)




You get to see the real ring of fire.

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You get the ride of your life.



There is pure oxygen.