Lake Quinault

We welcomed the year 2014 at the Lake Quinault Lodge on the beautiful Olympic Peninsula. The weather was perfect, our hiking friends were fabulous, and the scenery was spectacular.

This was the view from our window....

 The kids' favorite activity was swimming in the lodge pool.

Art, craft projects, and games in the lodge were my favorite.

 Pillow fighting was also a favorite...

 We love this lodge.

 Cartwheels on the beach of course!

 So many waterfalls, trees, moss, and beauty everywhere...

 We were so excited to see a herd of Roosevelt Elk.

 Erin Joy's heart.

 Ruby Beach...

 Hoh Rain Forest...

 Ferry ride home...

Little movie including two songs at the end that the girls listened to and sang all the way home...

Happy New Year!

All year, we have been writing things that we are thankful for on pieces of paper and putting them in our Gratitude Jar. It has been a very fun way to recognize all the many blessings we have.  We have been looking forward to New Year's Eve to empty our jar and start again.

 We had so much fun reading our gratitudes for 2013. It took us two hours to read all of them.

 We then organized them into piles according to months. We thought it was interesting that August had the least amount of gratitudes followed by July. We decided that they had the least amount because we were so busy camping, traveling, and having fun during the summer that we didn't write as many gratitudes. Summer is definitely my favorite time of year and the time I feel most grateful.

We organized it into a big binder and finished 20 minutes before midnight. Our binder has 74 pages of things we are thankful for. We certainly have a lot of blessings.

The first page....

And the last page...

This is one of my favorite pages. It is a page without dates. Instead of writing dates, Erin Joy often wrote the days of the week so it was hard to tell which months her gratitudes were from.  My favorite one is one the bottom center written on "Friday tomarrow is Saderday." Silly girl:)

 We noticed several gratitudes that were the same or very similar. This one from Erin Joy appeared many times....

I'm thankful for her too!

This is one of my gratitudes that appeared more than once...

And one of Rachel's that appeared many times...

This one appeared many times too. Not sure why I switched from third person to first person in my writing. My high school English teacher wouldn't be happy.

Both girls wrote about being thankful for the cat numerous times. 

     

 

A few from summer because we were too busy having fun...

 We have several from non-family members. When people visited, we often had them write one too.

 We really enjoyed reading the gratitudes from others. We are going to make more of an effort to have our guests write gratitudes.

We were interrupted from organizing our gratitude jar by our neighbors who invited us to enjoy their great firework show. Fun!!

Exactly 11:59, December 31, 2013.

 12:00 midnight, January 1, 2014. I missed this picture by 10 seconds. Pretty darn close though...

Happy New Year!! I sure love these girls! I'm glad they stayed awake until midnight to enjoy sparkling apple-cranberry cider in their pajamas.

My Crafty Girls

 Both girls are producing many rubber band bracelets. Erin Joy is especially having fun.

Rachel wanted to crochet a pot holder. It ended up curving upwards so she turned it into a candy dish instead.

Dollhouse Furniture

 We spent the afternoon putting together and painting dollhouse furniture that Santa Claus brought us. I didn't take any pictures of the process, but here is the final product drying on the counter. Fun times! I'm still in my pajamas. I LOVE winter break! I am enjoying every minute and dreading the day I have to go back to school.