happy birthday griffin

On Friday, November 26th, we celebrated Griffin's 4th birthday!

The happy, birthday boy!

The "Novemberists" gathered around.

Griffin got a giant nerf gun from his parents that all the kids were interested in trying.

Tyler & Cohen taking some time to cuddle Tate.

Digging in to the delicious Batman cake!

Cedar enjoyed putting the darts back in the holder.

Group photo. This one includes Erik, who was down for Thanksgiving, but is missing Aaron, who was at work. Hard to get everyone in a family photo lately, but this one was close. :)

thanksgiving #2

We celebrated with the Hecht side later that evening, at 7 pm. We waited for my dad to get off work & then feasted (again, for some of us). :)

The spread.

Pumpkin pie from our own home grown pie pumpkins. Based on this recipe from last year's sweet meat pie.

I also made the traditional Henry family cranberry orange salad that was Kenton's great, great, great grandmother's recipe. So yummy with whipped cream! :P

Again, no pictures of people, only food. Go figure. There are more photos of people coming up. :)

thanksgiving #1

We celebrated Thanksgiving early Thursday afternoon with the Henry family.

I made pumpkin chocolate chip cookies for a "lighter" dessert. They were very soft & tasty.

Finn watching They Might Be Giants: Here Come the ABC's...or Here Come the 123's...or Here Comes Science. He's been very into all three. He loves the songs & the videos & can often be heard humming or singing the songs at any time. Pretty cool. I especially like hearing my 4 year old singing, "The sun is a miasma of incandescent plasma..." :P

The delicious turkey.


Pappa carving the turkey.

The feast.
So delicious, of course. No pictures of the people, just the food. I'll work on that. :\

snow!

We were spoiled the week before Thanksgiving with a small dusting of SNOW! So cool! Only way it would have been cooler is if we were in school & could've had a snow day. Oh well, we'll take it!

Happy kids! This was before Cedar's gloves came off & he quickly became very unhappy. But a little hot cocoa did the trick! ;)

Happy chickens...

...I think. Hard to tell with chickens.

more tate & a fort

Tate ended up having some complications with Bilirubin levels & had to go back to the hospital. A whole week went by before I was able to see the sweet boy again. I was going through withdrawals. So sad. So we made a trip over to their house once Tate had returned home again & the family was settled in.

Proud older cousin, Finn

*****

Later that night...

I helped Finn build a fort in our living room.

The boys had fun with flash lights & books.

Fun to see the boys playing together in their cool fort! :)

date night

We cashed in on a date night (a gift from Carolyn & Jesse for our birthdays this year - childcare for one night a month for 12 months!) & went out for Sushi at Izumi.

We were brave & ordered things that we hadn't tried before. Some ended up being raw & freaking me out a bit, but I still tried it. It tasted great, but still freaked me out. :P After dinner we went to see a movie. It was a nice, relaxing, tasty night! Thanks Carolyn & Jesse!

gymnastics

For his birthday, Finley received a month of gymnastics classes from our friends Carolyn & Jesse. This has been such a fun experience for him!

The classes are through our local community center & take place at Gymnastics Northwest.

Finn really loves learning new skills at his class & really wants to impress his teachers. He's often one of the only boys & it's so interesting for me to see him in this environment.

He's definitely been more nervous & timid than I'm used to seeing. He's even a little less impulsive & quieter. I think it's good for him to be in a learning environment that is a little out of his comfort zone. :) Keeps him on his toes!

This was on his first day & he's improved so much already. We've been able to keep up the classes for a few months & plan on continuing for the time being. We'll see if this is something that he really wants to keep working on or if it's just fun for now. Either way, it's been so fun for me & Kenton to watch him experience gymnastics. :)

welcome owen

My dear friend, Sheila & her family have been missionaries in Indonesia for 14 months & they decided to come back to the States to wait for the arrival of their newest son Owen. Sheila & Gretchen were due just one day apart & ended up giving birth to their sons one day apart! I thought I'd get a chance to meet Owen in the hospital, since I would be there for Tate's birth, but Sheila ended up going home before I arrived. So I had to make a special visit to their home to meet the sweet new baby. :)

Little Owen Joshua.

Big brother Nathan was excited to show me his room & his toys. He's my little buddy & I just love him! :)

Not too sure of me yet, but I'll win you over. ;)

The new family of four.
Sheila, Nathan, Paul & Owen

I'm so very thankful that they were able to travel home for Owen's birth & that I was able to meet him! What a blessing you are, baby Owen!

happy birthday ethan & macey

We celebrated Ethan & Macey's 4th birthdays at Papa's Pizza on Saturday, November 13th.

Ethan, Finn & Macey "playing" arcade games.

Singing "Happy Birthday" to the birthday kids.

We sure do love you Ethan & Macey! We're so glad we get to play with you so often & watch you grow!

Later that day, we went back to the hospital to visit Tate again.

I just love holding a tiny baby. He's so precious!

Aunt Katie, baby Tate & Mama Gretchen

welcome tate

Tate Gordon Ruddick was born on Friday, November 12th, 2010 at 5:45 pm. Gretchen did so great and only had to push for about a minute!

Tate had so many loved ones waiting to meet him!

So sweet and tiny.

6 lbs 6 oz, with the longest umbilical cord that the doctor had ever seen. :)

Proud Memaw

Big brother Ronan was so sweet with his new, little brother

Big brother Griffin with Papa and baby Tate

Finn and Cedar sure love their new cousin!

We love you Tate!


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No I have not dropped off the face of the earth! I've been enjoying my time off work with family & friends. The holidays have been so refreshing & I am ready to get back into the routine of normal life - including blogging. :) Aside from the holidays, I will also blame our newly rearranged family room (the computer that I normally blog on is now set up differently) & a class I'm taking on Adobe Illustrator (with which I am constantly trying to keep up). Hopefully, I can finish blogging all of the photos that were on the other computer & find a new system for blogging new photos using our lap top. I know no one really needed that lengthy explanation for where I've been, but I've been feeling guilty. So there you have it. :)