Christmas in Seattle and Kelso

We had 2 Christmas celebrations. The Peterson Christmas on Dec 23 and Sovar Christmas on Dec 25.

Some sad news during the happy Christmas celebrations. Mark's parent's dog passed away on Christmas morning. Marvin had been hanging on for awhile and we're all happy we got to be with him in his last days. This was Marvin on Dec 23rd, hanging out like a king while all the commotion of picture taking was going on in the other room.

On the 23rd, Mark's mom arranged for a family photo since she had all her boys and their families in one place.

Total of 18 of us including 4 in Craig's family, 5 in Eric's family, 5 in Kim's family, the grandparents and Mark and I.

We had the full family picture and individual pictures with each family. Our little family looked empty without Bailey. Here's Karen, Larry and the 4 boys.

We were very happy to get to meet Kim's little boy Cade. He is such a happy little 2 1/2 year old that it was hard for me to stop smiling at him.


At the Sovar Christmas in Seattle, we got to meet by baby brother's fiance Kelly. Baptism by fire to spend almost 3 full days with the whole clan at Christmas.

Mark and Elly were best friends and although this picture looks like he was going to kick her in the head, I'm sure Elly was about to give him a foot rub.

We played rock band and Michael and Gene proved they've spent way too much time playing this game since they were able to score really high on the hardest levels. (note Katie on the drums and John's rad 2 toned hairdo)

Ann got 5 puzzles for Christmas and enlisted a whole team of puzzle people to help her put them all together in back to back marathon puzzle days.

My mom and dad got groovy yard gnomes in their images from Ann's family and some snazzy hat/umbrella's from me.

We played soccer and Elly, me, Gene and Mike won against the team of Ann, John, Katie and Dad. (I should say Gene and Mike won since they did most of the work, but Elly and I will take the glory too). Buster played for both sides and was great at running interference.

Mark and I tried to teach Buster as much cuddle habits as possible while we were there (Ann may say "bad habits" but that's just an adjective. I prefer cuddle and Buster clearly prefers the bed cuddles too)

We convinced Michael, my mom and dad and Ann and John and the girls to go to Kelso to hang with the Peterson family in our last days in USA. Craig and Kristen's dog Brodie and Ann and John's dog Buster were almost twins and LOVED playing with each other.

Lots of random pics below, including:

Katie holding Murphy (Craig and Kristen's cat)

A walk around Lake Sakajewea.