Holiday Cheer . . . Around Here . . .

I LOVE Christmas time! It is such a beautiful season of joy and fun activities! We enjoyed rolling and cutting out some Christmas cookies with Isaac this past weekend!

He got covered in flour!! It was hilarious!

After our cookie-bake-off, we got cleaned up and headed out for a family night out! We ate at P.F. Chang's (YUM), and then went to the Michael W. Smith concert at 2nd Baptist church with full orchestra and choir! It was AWESOME!

Smitty!!

The back up singers were incredible, also! They were a group of 4 brother and sisters from Louisiana and were very talented. They even played some Louisiana-flavored songs that were GREAT! And the brother was so funny when he clarified that the folks behind him in the orchestra were playing violins and his was a "Fiddle"!!! It was funny! He tore it up on that fiddle, too!

After the concert, we checked out Christmas lights in the neighborhood near the church. This yard was FANTASTIC! I couldn't believe how lit up it was and just gorgeous!

Isaac was pretty tired, so he just put himself to bed in his car seat (while reading his "kiddie" Bible)!

Flora and fauna around home. . .

I love these hot pepper decorative plants! I think you can eat them, but I have heard that they are VERY spicy! We haven't tried them, but I love the way they look in my planter!

We have three barrel planters on our back patio, and they are all in full bloom right now! I just had to snap a couple of photos!

One of our rose bushes along the back fence is exploding with blooms right now! I LOVE this color, it's my favorite! I got a little carried away with taking photos of it, so I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

This is a type of verbena, and the bees and butterflies LOVE it! I like the vivid purple blooms!

I titled this post Flora and fauna, but I just realized the only fauna out there was my "wild son" Isaac! Ha ha! He's not that wild, but he IS very active!

How does your garden grow?

We are growing a second garden right now! This is the "Fall Garden". It includes tomatoes (which froze recently) and cabbage, collard greens, turnips, lettuce, radishes (yummy), Brussels sprouts, and my herbs --spearmint, basil, rosemary, and sage. Everything is doing pretty well, although we were sad to lose the tomatoes because there were lots of them on the vine. The collards are delicious just boiled in salty water!

Isaac loves to walk around in the garden, and sometimes does some random harvesting when we turn our backs. He seems to understand where the rows are, thankfully!

He also likes to pull up the markers that are at the top of each row. Fortunately we know what everything is now that it is so big.

Collard greens . . . they have gotten even bigger than this, believe it or not! I think I'll go pick some now for supper!

Isaac's first "real" hair cut!

I took Isaac to get his first "real" hair cut at my salon! Previously, I had trimmed the long hairs around his ears a little, but didn't want to try doing any "real" cutting. I would like to eventually try cutting his hair, but probably not until he's able to sit still for me!

He was very still most of the time! He didn't cry or try to get down. I held his hand the whole time and reassured him that he was doing great!

He got to sit up high on a special booster bar on top of the regular salon chair. He often squinted and smiled and crinkled his neck up because the gentle touch of the comb and scissors tickled! He even giggled a few times. When she used the little buzz shaver thing, he thought that tickled too, and was really curious about the sound it made.

She did a really great job with his hair! I was happy to have it still a little long on top, but the edges nice and sharply trimmed! Just how I like it!

Family fun!

We had such a nice time visiting Jason's cousins and Aunts and Uncles! It was great! When we arrived, Jason's cousin and Isaac had the same colored shirts on! They had fun together --we all did!

Cousins D D and Charles and Jason's Aunt and her husband, Don.

Isaac really enjoyed hanging out with Cousin Charles and trying to catch his little kitty! He tried and tried to get his hands on it, but only with our help was he able to pet him.

Isaac made a new friend! They were so cute playing together!

Isaac and Jeremy really had fun together and bonded! Isaac even fell asleep on his lap one day!

Isaac was thrilled to play with Cousin D D's toys!

As we were getting ready to leave, the neighbor's dog came over to say hello. Isaac LOVED playing with him and chasing him!

The dog LOVED Isaac, too!

Seattle ~ Pike's Place Market

I had heard about Pike's Place Market after reading a book called "Fish", which was about excellent customer service and having happy workers who do a great job. They throw fish there, and so I was eager to "watch the show". However, they didn't throw very many fish while we were there, so I was a little disappointed. It turns out that they only throw the fish when people buy the fish (and maybe when a shipment of fish first arrives...not sure). People weren't buying fish at the time that we were there, but about 50+ tourists all had their cameras out to take photos of flying fish. It was a mad house! I definitely didn't get the "fish flying show" I had been expecting. I'm sure they do work very well, and are very happy employees, but I wasn't a terribly happy tourist after visiting the fish area.

Otherwise, the Pike's Place market was really great! I loved looking at all the beautiful fruits and veggies and the GORGEOUS flowers!!! They had all these great bouquets for sale . . . and cheap! If I lived in Seattle, I'd have fresh flowers on my table all the time at those prices!

If you look really close in the middle and slightly to the right in this photo, you will see one of the few fish that we got to see "flying"! :-)

FLOWERS!! And this was not the only area where they were assembling and selling these pretty bundles, there were at least 6-7 other vendors who had an area set up just like this.

We walked around a little park that over looked Pike's Place market for a while and let Isaac stretch his legs and run around.

This was the view from that area --a cool perspective of the water and highway by downtown Seattle.