A shout out to home towns and family and ridiculousness...

As per our usual, we took off Christmas day and started our annual drive to Washington. We had already decided that since we had people staying with us, we would only drive as far as Pendleton. A wise choice as we didn't end up leaving until almost 4 PM. Here is our obligatory start-of-the-trip photo:

You can't see the Dutch Bros. for some reason. Weird, since we ALWAYS make Mark stop.

Most of our drive the first day looked like this!

Which was a welcome sight since we had been getting a bit of snow before we left. I thought the drive was easy, but probably because I was in the passenger seat reading magazines.

We got on the road "early" the next morning...around 10. Which is fairly early when you have two teens.

When we got to Grandma Jeanne and Grandpa Brians, the girls immediately headed outside for some rock skipping. Love this view!

They were also mesmerized by the record player we got G'ma and G'pa. 

No trip to Washington would be complete without a trip here...

Along with the accompanying shenanigans...

And our selfie game is on point...or on fleek. Whatever these young whipper snappers say these days.

We spent some time here:

And even though I went to Fort, NOT Evergreen, I seemed to have spent quite a bit of time here my senior year for some reason. Weird.

We got to watch this chick (who goes to Fort, and never hangs out a a rival school) mix it up on the court.

We also got to hang out with these hooligans who are so, so much cooler than we are. 

They fed us drinks that were on fire for goodness sake!

And took us to a classy pizza place...

And to a place that only serves pie. Well, mostly they only serve pie...

 It's like they know my love language!

Obviously, the girls miss the days when I used to dress them alike...

Awkward.

There is no doubt I grew up in a gorgeous place:

We will sure miss it until the next trip.

Happy 2016! 

And in the interest of full disclosure, this was written while sitting on my couch in my jammies, snuggled under my new heated blanket, sipping a homemade flat white. I {heart} vacation!!

12 Days Of(f at) Christmas...

See what I did there? Clever, right?

If my title didn't give it away, I am officially off work until January! Pretty excited to say the least.

Although, my first day off started out with this:

My new favorite drink is the Flat White from Starbucks. And FWIW, I dig the red holiday cups.

It was shortly followed by this:

I've been having some trouble with numbness in my fingers so my doc scheduled an MRI. On my first day of Christmas. {sad face}  I don't know if you have ever had an MRI but holy cow that was loud! But, I think the scrubs add a little something to my overall look...like about 50 pounds.

I then proceeded to a couple stores by the mall. Because I'm cray-cray like that. No pictures as it was every man for himself and I was afraid of suffering the wrath of last minute shoppers.

I did come home to this:

Which is a picture of my people chopping wood for THIS:

And THIS is something I can totally get behind. I hope to see a lot more of this over my remaining days off.

Currently, I'm sitting looking at this:

Which makes my heart happy. 

And I'm currently eating one of these:

Which Mark and the girls made while I was at work yesterday. If you don't recognize them, here is a description the girls printed out to attach to the plates they are taking to the neighbors.

Kolache

A traditional Czech pastry with fruit filling like poppy seed (the most traditional), cherry, lemon and apple. The poppy seed kolache can also be called orechovnik or makovnik, in the modern words. In the past, kolache referred to and Czech pastry that was round and had a filling. The symbolism of giving kolache to neighbors and friends is sharing good will and holiday cheer in preparation for Christmas and Three Kings Day.

I think they can give all the poppy seed ones to the neighbors. ;-)

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas!