Portland Get-a-way
Tom had a short business trip this past week, and the girls had sememter break on Monday, so we tagged along for the first part of the trip.
We went to Multnomah Falls. We couldn’t get very close, but it was still pretty!
Snow Day!
We gathered up our snow gear and headed up to the snow last weekend. There was a TON of it and we found a great place to play!
It was really deep!
Molly Turns 10!
We started off celebrating Molly’s birthday a few days early with a donut themed sleepover with swimming the next day!
We gave her a budget and thanks to some 75% Christmas sales, she was able to make these adorable tents to sleep in!
Family Date 2 of 12
Our second family date was to see Star Wars, The Last Jedi. We all liked it and of course ate a bunch of junk food. We had some grumpy, tired kids in the car on the way home, which was a bummer, but at least we had fun at the movie. No family picture for this one, but I still wanted to document it. 🙂
New Appliances
Over the past few years, we’ve been able to upgrade some things in our kitchen, making it nicer to cook at home…well nicer for Tom…I don’t know any different as it’s the only place I cook. 🙂 However, the main appliances that came with the house were very low end. The dishwasher didn’t work very well. One of the burners on the stove only worked some of the time and the oven didn’t cook consistently, which was a huge frustration for us all!
On black Friday, Tom noticed some great deals on appliances…something we never thought of looking for on sale that day! We went and talked briefly to someone at Home Depot and then came home and ordered a new refrigerator, dishwasher and range!
They are all stainless steel and OH MY GOODNESS, what a difference they make!
Yesterday I decided to not rinse all of the dishes before I put them in the dishwasher and see what would happen….they were sparking clean after I ran it!
The stove is amazing! The flat glass top looks so sleek and clean! It has one super fast burner which makes boiling water so much quicker and helps get great color on things!! The convection oven (with a proofing setting!!!!) bakes things perfectly! The bread and rolls I made today look beautiful (and taste yummy as well.)
The refrigerator is a side by side one which I really like. We got the biggest one we could for the space we have. It’s nice to have ice and water in the door!
It’s amazing how different our main room looks with the new appliances! It’s also amazing how grimely some of our hands are as I see where they touched the appliances….Yuck!! Thankfully I found some great microfiber cloths that wipe them clean easily!
Sorry for the over use of the word “amazing” in this post! Can you tell how much I love our new appliances??
Here are some before and after pictures.
Before
After
Family Date 1 of 12
This year for Christmas we decided to get the girls a year of experiences. On Christmas morning, they opened 12 boxes, one for every month from December through November. In each box was an activity we would do as a family.
Last Friday was our first family date. We drove up to the Seattle Children’s Theater and saw “Mr. Popper’s Penguins.” (more…)