Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Chase and I didn't travel home for Christmas this year. We were very sad about not getting to take part in all of the fun Christmas get togethers that our families had. However, we did have a very nice and relaxing Christmas here in Richland. 

Our Christmas celebrations started off with a lovely party thrown by a coworker on Saturday night. We had some great homebrew and good food! I made these SkinnyTaste Red Velvet Rudolph Cupcakes. I'm sure most of you are aware, but I am OBSESSED with this website. Almost everything I cook is off of her website. Thank you to Karen Stephens for introducing me! 

We also had a nice Christmas dinner with Kit and Kelsey on Sunday night! Kit and Kelsey cooked an awesome ham as well as some roasted veggies; and Chase and I brought some stuffing (also skinnytaste), bread and roasted butternut squash! Here is the spread! It was a fun evening of food, friends and games! They also got us the coolest Christmas present! A picture of the Royals stadium and some napkins Kelsey had sewn. So nice of them. Thanks guys!

The weather was beautiful on Christmas Eve. I didn't have to work that day and Chase got off work at 12 PM. He called me on his way home and was so excited about how clear it was out and wanted to go up to Badger Mtn. I frantically started coloring the Flat Stanley that we have for my second cousin Daniel so that we could take him along on the adventure as well! 

Chase also had me open one of my Christmas presents early as well. It was a Gorillapod for the camera! It is a flexible tripod for the camera. We can take it hiking and wrap it around tree branches or rocks or whatever to get the pictures we want! I'm very excited to take it out!

The clarity of the sno-capped Blue Mountains in the distance was the main reason we wanted to head up to Badger. It is very rare to be able to see the Blue Mountains from the Tri-Cities. We get a lot of fog here in the winter and a lot of smoke in the summer/fall from all the wildfires. It is very hazy on a regular basis here which I was not anticipating! I have a feeling that the spring time is the most clear season so I'm excited for that.

Once we got to the top of Badger we headed over to the other side to look towards the west. We had been told that you can see Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams and Mt. Rainier on a clear day. Sure enough we could see Mt. Hood (I didn't get a good picture) and either Mt. Adams or Mt. Rainier. We think its Rainier, but we really aren't sure...

The picture quality isn't so good since you can still barely see the mountain! It is much more clear in person, but the pictures aren't too bad considering that huge mountain is about 200 miles away.

We had to get a few pictures with Flat Stanley too! It took me over an hour to color Flat Stanley. We were supposed to make him look like someone from our region. We associate the Northwest with lots of beautiful hiking, so I dressed him up as a hiker complete with a backpack. It took awhile because of course we had no crayons and it took me awhile to find some markers...also, I'm not very artsy. I'm working on it though...I've been going to a pottery class and sewing a lot as well (more to come later)!

Chase manned the camera on the way down and he got these awesome pictures of the White Bluffs. They are across the river from our house. You can ALMOST see our house in the photo. It is just to the bottom right of the photo. I started to try and actually zoom in on our house, but as you can see it wasn't super warm. The sun was setting at this point and it was super windy up there! Glad I had my buff to cover my ears!

 We cooked some delicious homemade creamy tomato basil soup for dinner and ate the remainder of the bread I had made earlier! We also enjoyed the spiced wine that I had purchased in Leavenworth a few weeks ago. I took some pictures of the bottle by the tree because it was so cool! I also had a little photo shoot with our cats by the tree. They loved the Christmas tree. I can't believe it didn't get knocked down this year!

*warning: I'm about to post a lot of pictures of our cats. I apologize, but at least I don't do it often

Christmas morning we got up and had chorizo breakfast burritos! Chase's favorite. With the help of Kelsey, I made us all some new stockings. I think they turned out pretty good if I say so myself! I'll throw a phone picture in there so you can see them close up! I'm pretty proud of them!

We were SO excited for the kitties to open their stockings. As you may have noticed in the picture above, they had already tried to get into their stockings the night before. We actually had to take them down. What were were thinking putting cat nip in their stockings while hanging. Oh well. It was fun. We found a Catnip Stoogie at the store and Chase just HAD to get it for the cats. We only got one and also got a light up ball for them. In retrospect, we should have gotten two of the catnip stoogies. I've never seen them react so fast to catnip like this. Enjoy:

Apparently Bo is harder to photograph than Miles because not as many of the ones of her turned out. Probably because she was hiding under the tree the whole time. She did obviously enjoy her catnip stoogie though. :)

Chase and I got each other surprise presents this year. Mine were much more of a surprise than Chase's were because he had already told me a few things he wanted and they already reached our limit! Chase got a new pair of hiking pants, a Sporting KC jersey and a Sporting KC soccer ball AND a new K-State sweatshirt! I was able to find some awesome deals! Chase got me the tripod for the camera, a phone attachment for it, a waterproof phone case for hiking and a gift card to a local winery. I'm excited to go use that! It was a great Christmas! Our first one as a married couple and our first one on our own. It was relaxing, but we are VERY excited to see our families in Jan and Feb. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Christmas Tree Lighting - Leavenworth, WA

PNNL (my employer) often sets up bus trips to attractions in the area. Most of the fun stuff is about a 3 hour drive, so sometimes it is really great to go see mountains without having to drive or stay overnight! Chase and I were able to take advantage of a bus trip to Leavenworth, WA for their Christmas tree lighting. Leavenworth, WA is a tourist trap town at the base of the mountains. It has a Bavarian theme. Some of our friends here were able to go on the trip as well! It was a fun day! I do wish we would have seen some more snow though. It took me awhile to get used to the volume of snow in MN, but now I find myself missing it a ton! Its so dry and ugly here. I've also had to get used to a new weather phenomenon called "freezing fog". Here is a picture from one of my commutes this week. Sorry the quality is poor, I took the picture with my phone through my car wind shield. However, sometimes we get awesome sunrises and clear skies! In the picture on the right you can see the moon setting while the sunrise illuminates Rattlesnake mountain. So pretty!

Ok, back to Leavenworth and pictures! The bus ride was pretty nice and they had snacks and water for us. We all chatted most of the way up and the took short naps right before we got there. It was so pretty driving into the snow! There wasn't too much snow in Leavenworth, but just enough so that it was fun to walk around in and see on the mountains! First we headed straight down to the river to check out the views and snow. The first picture is my favorite I think.

It was cold. Surprise, surprise

 What a fun looking group!

After hiking around down by the river for a bit we headed back up to the town to get some coffee to warm up! We found a little cafe and got a table. I felt bad for the owner of the cafe because it was super busy and none of her workers could find parking. Leavenworth was cool but I would NOT return for the Holiday festivities unless I was on a bus. Parking was CRAZY. Actually everything was crazy. It took us an hour to find some place to sit and get some food and drinks around 2 PM. But I have digressed. The cafe owner was raving about her irish coffee (whiskey coffee). Liezel and I decided to try some and I'm glad we did! It was delicious!

After our irish coffee warm up, we decided to wonder around a bit more and started trying to find a place to eat lunch/watch the MLS cup. Chase was very excited to watch Sporting play! After a few rude people, a lot of crowds and some pushing we finally found a pub that wasn't so crowded. The guys wait for our table while Sonja, Liezel and I did some shopping, well looking around mostly. It was so hard to move around in the crowded little stores with so many people!

Lunch was tasty and we got to watch the Sporting game! Chase had to sweet talk the waitress to get her to turn it to the Sporting game. Interesting thing is that they were showing some skiing sports from who knows where previously. No one was watching it, but we still had to beg! Here are some fun pictures of Chase to prove it. I even got one of him making a face at the TV because Real Salt Lake almost scored on us.

After watching most of the game and drinking some yummy local beer it was pretty clear that the game was going to go into overtime. Liezel, Sonja and I left Huy and Chase at the pub watching the game while we went to look in the shops! We ended up finding some wine tasting. We bought some spiced wine to enjoy on Christmas. We are actually drinking it right now since I'm actually writing this on Christmas Eve. Opps!

After wine tasting and seeing Sporting KC win the MLS cup it was time for the actual Christmas tree lighting. I took a video of the tree lighting. I didn't end up getting very many good pictures. There were just too many people. I did however get an awesome video of Chase and I being silly. In short, the lights didn't go on right away and some that were already on went off! It was funny. We had just watched Christmas Vacation on the way to Leavenworth, so that is the explanation for my yelling at the end of the video. Chase insisted I post this ridiculousness.

The bus left at 6:15 and the tree lighting happened around 4:30. This gave us just enough time to grab a beer at Icicle brewery and a yummy soft pretzel for the bus ride home. The trip was really fun! I am definitely glad that we were on a bus and had friends to hang out with. We can't wait to go check out Leavenworth again during the summer!