Getting our Pi(e) On!

 With the musical in the evening, we gathered earlier in the day to celebrate what today is all about: pi!

Well, most of us celebrated. Some us are anti-pie. 

Christmas Day

I have to say that we are very, very slowly moving our Christmas morning festivities to a later hour of the morning and I am thrilled. We managed to schedule gift opening for 8am this morning so that Michael and Ben could take showers before we got started. 

Josh may no longer live at home, but is a good sport and still came over wearing his matching pajamas. I am going to try to keep this tradition going as long as I can.

Look at all these bright, happy faces! We are so fortunate to have these lovely people close by to celebrate with us.

One of the coolest gifts of the day were these Fortnite boxes that Cody made himself with their 3D printer. Cody is some sort of 3D printer wizard and the boxes were full of fun items some of which were also 3D printed. 

    MORE presents and then a family pic and dinner.

Another great Christmas on the books.

Christmas Eve

As soon as Ben finds out that I have used this picture on the blog I am pretty sure I will have to take it down, but here it is for now. Swim team is an intense commitment which involves practice all the way through the winter break. To mix things up a bit, they have a tradition of playing polo on Christmas Eve. Apparently their version of water polo doesn't have many rules so there are some (minor) injuries. I have almost no knowledge of water polo, but I suspect this attempt by Ben to tackle Isaac is probably not legal in a typical game.

Having received no significant injuries, Ben and Michael went to go see Wicked in the movie theater with Jason and Aunt Rachel. That film is an epic 3 hours long and everyone agreed that it was good but could have used an intermission.

Later in the day, we had family over for our Christmas Eve dinner and game night. (Minus Michael who spent the evening participating in Angela's family's festivities.)  Jason and Cody made a variety of appetizers for dinner and then we moved on to minute-to-win-it style games. 

Lessons learned: Ben has a hard time not laughing when balancing plates on his head. Jason's head is very round and his hair is slippery. Rachel and Josh have the most experience with chopsticks. Absolutely no one in this group of people is at all competitive. (HA!)

Surprise! The boys got to open one gift on Christmas Eve and they got pajamas. The older boys got these shirts:

Then everyone went home to attend to dogs or food for the next day and the Millers all settled in for a long winter's nap.

Thanksgiving

We've done this two years in a row now so I think it's officially a tradition! Isaac and I get some pre-meal wiggles out by taking a walk around the neighborhood and picking up trash. Now that I think about it, it's actually impressive that we've had two Thanksgivings in a row when it wasn't raining. Hopefully that keeps up in the future. 

It is always interesting to see what trash we find around. Among other things, this time we found two glow sticks and a ridiculous amount of broken glass. 

Cody and Doug (well, mostly Cody) cooked the meat this year. They bought a smoker and were excited to try it out. Like a good chefs, they did a trial run and smoked a turkey a few weeks ago. I usually try new recipes for holiday meals and then a significant number of them are inedible. However, the turkey they made was delicious and the brisket they made was amazing as well. 

They also brought mashed potatoes, stuffing, pumpkin pie, and sweet potato pie. I made a crustless spinach quiche, creamed spinach, crustless pumpkin pie, and chocolate cream pie. Needless to say, we have leftovers.

We took a break between the main meal and dessert to play a loud and long game of ImaginIff. We missed having Nana and Aunt Rachel here with us, but they'll be back for Christmas.

Adventures with Keith

We were lucky enough to have Keith come visit us this week. You may be wondering, who is Keith? Keith is my grandfather's cousin's son. Which we believe makes us second cousins once removed. Or, "a distant relative".

Unfortunately Keith was visiting during an extreme heat wave and it was in the upper 90s for most of his time here. (Note: while not uncommon in many parts of the country, this was very hot here where many of us don't have air conditioning.) In a successful attempt to escape the heat, we drove out to Fort Flagler on Tuesday where the weather was glorious. We spent some time walking along the beach and collecting shells.

Fort Flagler was a military installation turned state park which includes old military buildings and gun batteries where people can now safely look around and explore inside. I found the "plotting room" which was probably for doing math to determine where/how to aim the large guns, but sounds like where evil schemes could be hatched.

The tiny museum was filled with items from the area's time as an active military installation, including this charming barrel that stored drinking water but could double as a commode once emptied of water. Very efficient use of materials. 

On our way home, we stopped off at Ben's favorite ice cream shop and introduced Keith to huckleberry ice cream and take a picture of Nana eating Ben's favorite ice cream flavor to text to Ben. The visit was a success.

On Thursday, Mom and I took Keith to Nisqually Wildlife Refuge. We were lucky enough to see some harbor seals (not seen here because at the highest magnification level on my camera they looked like tan and grey blobs). I did take some pictures of Keith living his best tall person life. Poor guy! 

And then, intrepid traveler that he is, Keith braved Amtrack to take him home. I am sure he will have stories about that. Hopefully he enjoyed his time here and we gave him a taste of Washington that will make him want to come back.

Associate's in Applied Sciences for Josh

An AAS in Cybersecurity and Network Administration is now on the books for Josh. He proudly wore his blue cap and gown this morning to walk across the stage as we experienced three seasons over the course a few hours. 

Three out of the four boys at 8:30 in the morning. 

Josh got ultra creative with his cap. Since it rained later, we assume none of this will actually work in a computer again.

Some of the audience members.

More audience members.

Shortly after he walked across the stage it started pouring and possibly it even hailed a little bit. 

He's moving on to an internship with the city and starting on a Bachelor degree in the fall. Exciting things coming up for him in the future!

Michael is 18 Party

18 is a ridiculous number of balloons to blow up. A banner is a much better/easier option. A snarky banner is the best option. 

Happy birthday to our newest adult! Or "adult"! Quotes or no quotes - depends on who you ask. In any case, he did himself proud and ate 18 stuffed shells even though his competition is 3000 miles away. We found out this year that the key to actually having left overs from this meal is to triple the recipe.  

We took a break from eating to play a game where "Michael's soul", "Doug's face", and "moist caterpillar" were popular answers. After Angela beat everyone, we celebrated Michael's (today) and Cody's (coming soon) birthdays with ice cream cake and mocha cheesecake, respectively.

Big smiles with Angela!

Memorial Day at Millersylvania

Continuing our tradition, we set out for Millersylvania for breakfast for Memorial Day. This schedule ensures we aren't fighting all of the holiday crowds. The boys aren't usually fans of getting up early, but this year we sweetened the deal by inviting Yogi. Oh, and Uncle Doug and Cody, too.

Isaac didn't start out the morning thrilled and panicked anytime Yogi got close. Doug and Cody kept him on leash, but that didn't make Isaac feel any better about the situation.

As always, Jason was the Master of the Grill and make delicious chocolate chip pancakes for the starving masses.

Yogi was excited about, well, just about everything and had to be taken on short walks to give him (and Isaac) a break.

Need a close up on this stuffed animal come to life? Ok. Here he is.

Eventually, when Yogi was worn out and had two dog parents holding his head, Isaac decided he could come and pet Yogi. He joined the ranks of people who love this dog and now wants to go see him. A big win for our kid who is so terrified of dogs!

We invited Michael's girlfriend and her family to join us. We had met her mom in Ellensburg but this time everyone got to meet Angela's parents and brothers, AJ and Adam. 

I appreciate when the PNW weather lets us enjoy this tradition.