Christmas with the Cousins

We spent Christmas this year in Seattle (Renton) or (technically unincorporated King County). We had a great time, as you could tell from the previous fatty post. But food was not the only focus of our time there. There were plenty of cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents to entertain, feed, and tease Will.
We'll start with cousin Hailey. Some of my friends and old roommates will be shocked to see this picture and realize that she's headed to high school next fall! I'm officially starting to get old.
Aunt Sara spent a good amount of time with the Willster. She probably fed him less cookies than most hence the sad face, but Will really does love his auntie Sara.

Matt was Will's favorite name to say during our stay there, and even a few weeks later. Cousin Matt was an expert at making Will laugh.
Matt also let Will play with his LightBrite! Will's new favorite toy.
Will didn't want to participate in the annual nativity. The kids did a great job this year with some fantastic costumes.
Christmas Eve was well documented by our paparazzi. But somehow we didn't get ANY pictures from Christmas morning, day, or evening!
I have to admit Will plays favorites. His all time favorite cousin, by far, is Natalie. She lets him squeeze her face, and mess up her toys. Will adores her and follows her around like a little, cute puppy.

Other stuff we did while on vacation was another murder mystery dinner. Here's the whole group "Cruising for Murder".
We didn't have an ugly sweater contest, but if we did, these two would have won!
We went to Snowflake Lane in Bellevue where there was dancing, holiday music, and fake snow falling from the mall. Will missed out because he was too tired.
We enjoyed some Washington nature going running in the neighborhood, hiking on Squak mountain, and exploring the woods behind my parent's house. I kind of miss being so close to wilderness.
Britton read, and cried, while reading The Christmas wish. Or was it called Christmas list, Christmas jars, Christmas shoes, Christmas orange, Christmas ice pick... It was some kind of Christmas noun.

Christmas Calories

Why does this happen every year? I know there will be all kinds of treats just sitting around within arms reach. I tell myself I ate all of them last year so I don't have to eat them all this year. Logic does not work during the holidays. The treats were extra scrumptious this year! I was amazed at all the different combinations of sugar, butter, chocolate, and flour we could turn out.

Here's a little tour of our impressive sugarland.
Sara made this fantastic fudge, and the secret ingredient is Dove chocolate! It makes it really smooth. It used to be a big pyramid of fudge, but was reduced to this by the time I took a picture of it.
We made cute homemade caramels! My nephew Matt is displaying them. Britton did a great job and I think they were pretty simple.
Sara also made some beautiful traditional sugar cookies.
My contribution and favorite of the treats were homemade marshmallows, covered in just enough chocolate to take them from plain ol' delicious to scrumdiddlyumptious. I wish I could take credit for this photography, but our camera died so this is just from Google images.
Will learned a few new words like cookie and chocolate. He had loving aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins and even us feeding his inner cookie monster. He was SUCH a picky eater after Christmas! He's back to normal foods now.

After our trip to Seattle we went straight to Britton's parents house where we participated in a donut making production. We were happy this tradition was postponed a little this year.

To compact the fatness I didn't exercise much from oh, Thanksgiving until New Years. There is hope! In the form of an apple. Meet my most unexpected Christmas present.
ipod Touch I love you! There's an app called Lose It! that keeps track of your calories and exercise. It's just what I need to get into my Christmas candy detox program.

Funniest Christmas Present Ever*

Check the Alex song out here!

I had a lot more time than usual to prepare for Christmas this year, and I'm very pleased with the fruits of our labors. For Kelsey we got surfing lessons which is way better than the traditional, boring Bath and Body Works stuff we got her last year. We used our Mac to create personalized calendars for both of our families, and Britton used Garage Band to create Alex's own theme song in both digital and sheet music forms:) It's called Ageyx-a-ma-fo. It's straight from Britton's crazy mind. Many a weird and spontaneous song has been created there. I was going to put the video up of us dancing to it Christmas morning, but it's a little too embarassing for the blog world. So here's a picture of people laughing. Email me if you'd like to see the video and I'll consider sending it to you. Also, feel free to make up your own dance and share it with us. Don't worry, we know a mere song isn't going to cut it for Christmas presents so Britton also got Alex some fishing lures and taught him how to fish with lures the next morning.

*Funniest Christmas present to me at least. Probably not as funny to people who don't know Britton, have never heard him make up weird songs, or hate techno music.