Vacation Report

Well now that we are through the holidays and getting caught up on most of the stuff around the house (except for cleaning up all of these Christmas presents), I have a moment to write about our trip to Florida.

Not sure I will remember everything, hopefully I will, but there is one thing that I remember for sure.  It was cold, not some sissy Florida cold, I mean it was freezing cold.  Highs during the day were in the low to mid 50's and when the sun went down it dropped into the 30's.  When you are outside all day...in Florida, that is absolutely freezing.  In the six years that we lived there, there was never a cold spell like the one that happened when we were there this year, and I believe is still going on.  It would get cold like that occassionally, maybe two nights tops, a week and a half was unheard of.  We had to buy jackets, hats, gloves, scarves, the whole kit.  We had two days in the 60's, so we took advantage of one of them to go swimming.  Luckily the pool was heated, but when you got out of the water it was really cold.  At least it was sunny the whole time....

Christmas at the Wynn's

Merry Christmas everyone!  I hope everyone had a very jolly day.  Here at the Wynn's, we had an excellent, very relaxed day.  This was the first Christmas that we spent with just us since having Ella 6 Christmas' ago.

Each of the last 6 years, we have either had family come to us, or we traveled back to Michigan to see friends and family.  This year we decided to vacation a few weeks ago and then stay put for Christmas, keep it nice and quiet.

Max's Birthday(s)

Max really lucked out this year and scored the birthday trifecta, he ended up getting cake 3 different times because we ended up being all over the place around his birthday so he scored 3 little parties with presents, cake, and ice cream.  The only trouble was getting all of his presents from Florida back to Seattle.  We had to buy 2 new bags to pack stuff in to take back with us, we didn't have enough room in our luggage.

Max kicked off his week of birthday celebration with having a few friends over to the house to watch Star Wars and have some cup cakes and ice cream.  It was nice and simple, we ordered a few pizzas and made "light side/dark side" cupcakes.  They were just chocolate cupcakes with either red or blue frosting in the middle, the kids had to choose wisely to see which side they ended up on.

Soccer Update

Finally getting around to another update here.  This time a little sports news before we can post some info from our vacation and Christmas.  Both Ella and Max played soccer this fall.  Soccer is pretty huge in these parts, there must be a million kids in soccer here.  The professional team, the Sounders, are routinely sold out and the games are supposed to really be something.  Most everyone stands through the whole game, we haven't had a chance to make it to one yet, but we would like to next year.

Ella played on the local youth league.  She got teamed up with a few girls in her school along with a few in nearby charter and private schools.  It was a fun team, all girls which was new as Ella played co-ed in Florida.  I will say the Apopka league in Florida was really good now that we have a comparison.  The program there was really top notch (good uniforms, excellent fields, thoughtful scheduling, etc.).  Here in Seattle it feels not quite as good, but Ella still had a lot of fun playing for the Golden Tigers.  I did not volunteer to coach this year as I wanted to keep some time to myself, I have to say that I missed it a bit, it is incredibly rewarding to coach little kids in something.  Ella's skills increased quite a bit through the year, I think it is starting to click with her.  We will probably sign her up in the spring again, though she is asking to try basketball, so we may give that a go at some point.  I think I also might try to get her into golf this coming summer, she has the long arms and body to develop a good golf swing.

Ella is hustling to play some defense here

Ella needs to learn the finer details of helping out her teammates, never leave a man behind

Max also played at a nearby indoor facility since he is not old enough for the local youth league yet.  They run a nice program just to get kids having fun, they learn some skills and scrimmage every practice.  We signed him up again for the winter session, and will probably try baseball in the summer.  Max has a real knack for hitting the ball, he might be a good golfer one day too.

Halloween at the Wynns

Halloween has come and gone and it was the busiest one yet for the Wynn Family.  We had a full weekend of activities and a surprise house guest.  We had trick-or-treating at Chris' work on Friday, we were having a party at our house on Saturday, and then another party and trick-or-treating at a friend's house on Sunday.  Then of course Monday, the 1st was Sarah's birthday.  And on Friday, Sarah's mom's boss' son came down to stay with us for the weekend.  He lives in Vancouver and was having a car delivered here, so he thought he was going to pop down and pick it up and go back to Vancouver, but the delivery got delayed so he had to stay and help us all weekend.

Pumpkin carving was a fun event.  Ella drew a design on hers for Chris to carve.  Thinking it would be easy to do some silly face, I went over to check it out and she had drawn 2 trees with a big spider web in between.  That was a bit tricky to carve.  Max was literally gagging from the smell of the pumpkins and kept his distance.  I had to do his whole pumpkin, he didn't really have any interest after getting a whiff of the insides.

Ella decided to dress up as Wonder Woman this year, and she was pretty excited by it.  Max had a Captain Rex costume from Star Wars, then on Sunday he decided that he wanted to be Darth Vader without the mask, which we already had a costume for.  We went over to a friends house for a halloween party and to go trick-or-treating with a whole group on Sunday.  They were a pretty crazy group of kids, running from one house to the next in a race to get a ton of candy.  Luckily the weather cooperated and we didn't have to contend with any nasty rain or anything.

Ella & Max in their costumes on our spooky porch

Check out the whole gang of trick-or-treaters