Getting ready for Christmas

Torsten is ready to talk with Santa–I notice that he is quite prominently crossing his fingers. I wonder if Torsten just finished telling Santa what a good boy he is and how he always goes to bed very easily for his mom and dad. (I’m “guarding” his bedroom door now while I blog.. Maybe he’ll go to sleep sometime soon.)

Thanksgiving!

We give thanks for all the great friends and family we have!  We wish we could have all of you here at once.  Since we can’t the annual potluck tradition continues.  The most recognizable tradition (the weigh-in/weigh-out) was a tie this year: Brian and Terry* both had a net gain of 8 lbs.  Congrats!

Some pre-dinner Blokus warm up (yes, Chip was in heaven):

The kids table was a success!  (Food eaten–and despite the kids request, it was more than just bread and potato)  (The camera wasn’t quite able to keep up with the kids–sorry!)

 

And a few shots around the adults’ table:

 

After dinner, we celebrated with the birthday boy:

the kids watched movies, the adults played Blokus and visited, there were cute Willa moments, and “the band got back together”:

 

And of course, if you need more, there is the whole gallery.

A Week in Portland

We had a great week in Portland.

Matt had two conferences (Sun-Tues Nat’l Science Foundation Regional Workshop and Fri-Sat Northwest Glaciology–but the nice Wed/Thur gap!) and Carrie and Torsten went along for fun. Grams met us there on Tuesday night and Gramps came in Thursday night. So we had a great catchup and visit with them!

We also got to catch up with two Juneau families who escaped the rain. Mira and the Kron family took us to the zoo (for the elephant pumpkin smash!!)

And Aubrey brought his mom Di to meet us at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (a huge hit!). (Mike Hekkers was also at Northwest Glaciology, so he and Matt got to catch up, but no photos..)

Everyone was so busy exploring the Polar exhibit, the water exhibit, and the Antarctica IMAX that we didn’t get a picture of everyone! Here are two more of our favorite photos from the trip:

Check out the whole gallery.

Arggh, matey

The happy pirate family had a great Halloween. Torsten really got into it, first lots of anticipation, costume selection, and pumpkin carving

with Halloween at preschool,

then over to the University for lots of costume fun.

Here’s a few of our favorite pictures, and the gallery shows more of us and our friends in costumes. Cody got some great photos at well–thanks.