The Concert of the Year

The MRCS school winter concert was on December 5th. This concert was the first concert for the new music teacher - Mr. Maas (our good friend) and was for the K - 3rd grade class. Hannah's class sang was called "Winter's Gift" it was fabulous (not just as a mom). Then the whole group sang Video Killed the Radio Star. It was so AWESOME! Here are some pictures of Hannah and Mr. Maas. Also, I tried to add a video of "Pull Shapes."

Thanksgiving

Well this Thanksgiving was a crazy time at the Nell household. The weekend prior to turkey day the kids had the flu, then Monday uncle Greg got the flu, then on Wednesday Dad got it. The kids (now healthy) and I went to stay at a hotel.

The next morning after swimming and eating breakfast we went over to Auntie Cathy's house. The kids favorite was the marshmallows on the yams... not the yams ... just the marshmallows.

We stayed for a few hours and then headed home to see if Dad was better.

Everyone is better now and we are all thankful for a great year.

Wow, how does time fly...

Okay, here is what I have been up to since the last post. It has been a busy month and the holidays are CRAZY!!!


In November I was offered a new job at Juneau Urgent and Family Care as the Clinic Administrator (fancy name for office manager). I started working part time on November 27th in the evenings learning the way the new office works. So while working at Legislative Audit I worked at the new job - man I am so not a a two job kind of gal.

My first full day at the new clinic was December 10th. I miss my old job, but I am sure this is a good move for me.

Seattle Day 5

Okay I will make this last one short and sweet!

I missed home and my kids and was looking forward to coming home... UNTIL I spoke to Joe and he told me that it was snowing... at which point Jeri and I seriously thought about heading to visit my Mom in Vegas!

We sat in the sun watching out luggage and the Full Circle Farms boxes being loaded... it was going to get into the mid-60s in Seattle and we were headed home to snow. SIGH.

I can't wait to start planning my next trip.

Day 4 Seattle - SHOPPING

So on our fourth day we lucked out and got an extra hour of sleep do to Daylight Savings time. We headed up to the Premium Outlet Center. OH WHAT Fun.

We had a good breakfast at IHOP (thanks to Mona and MapQuest)! Then off to shop. The outlet opened at 10am and we were there. About 1pm we headed to lunch and had great soup, salad and bread - Anthony's I think was the name of the restaurant. Back to the outlet center and more shopping. Em and I stuck together the whole day... man we laughed. We tried on things we wouldn't ever wear, and some things we thought we wouldn't wear and ending up bringing home cause darn-it it looked good! We bought a lot and had to pack it... our bed was covered!

At 4:30ish we headed back to the hotel. We all then went to this FABULOUS Mediterranean Restaurant. WOW the food was great. Tons of garlic!!! TONS!!!



Em and I headed after dinner to our room to finish our movie and watch another!! I love trips with the girls!

Day 3 Seattle

Day three started out with the ever brilliant Em saying we should drive the car to the convention center to get a SUPER parking spot. So at 7:30 we headed out and caught the hotel shuttle as it brought the first of the expo attendees. We then went to the hotel restaurant to get breakfast. They offered us the buffet and though it looks fabulous, we declined the $18 a plate price, for a more thrifty eggs and toast. We then went to meet up with Jeri for our first class of the day (riding the shuttle with about 30 other people in a 15 person shuttle).

We had a full day of lines and classes. I think my favorite class was our last one by SEI. We put together an entire album. But the best part is Em & I ran down to their booth after the class and signed up for an every-other month club. basically they send us enough to do 8-10 scrapbook pages. Plus the class we took had an awesome instructor. Mona also was the one lucky one and won not only a door prize in one of her classes, but won a Creating Keepsakes door prize as well.

-----------------Us in line ----------------- the cutters again -----------Em hard at work

----------------------Examples ------------ Cool instructor -----------Happy Jeri

Bah

Winning time 2:30 ------------Dancing Mona

So I have to tell you about the picture below... you all know I was getting a picture of one or all of us in each class. However this one was done with extra people in it... if you look close you can tell that these two women are not participating. They didn't do any of the exercises or any pages, just sat there and watched, listened and took some notes... WEIRD!

After the day of classes we all sort of split up. Jeri and Mona met up with Stephanie for some Indian cuisine, and Em, Carol and I headed for comfort food - The Cheesecake Factory. Unfortunately, everyone and their mother thought that would be a good idea. We gave our name and were told to come back in an hour to get a pager and the total wait would be about 75 minutes. Bah to that... off to Red Robin and a 15 minute wait time... and good food and a cute waiter with a Mohawk!

When we got back to the hotel we got into our jammies, put on Harry Potter, and took out some of our projects from the conference to work on. Two things happened, first, we realized how tired we were and, second, we found that at this hotel you can pause and resume a movie the next day.

Seattle Day #2

After a good night sleep we headed to the Expo. What can I say to explain what it is like to be surrounded by hundreds of women. INSANE!!!

Plus none of them are as smart as we are. First off we planned on getting there early to get a great parking spot (which was AWESOME). Then we headed up into line for the first class. While waiting we spotted this... we think it was for the construction site but with this many women who knows...

We stood, sat and laughed in line a lot though out the weekend. One thing we talked about was other peoples inability to recognize that 1-there was a line, and 2 - they should go to the end of it. Here is a picture of our first line Em is in her pink coat. Please note that the line starts at room 406 and heads down then wraps back around.

In this next picture we decided that we needed to make a scrapbook page about the things we don't like about Expos... maybe even a Mock-u-mentory if we could get Arlo to help. The women in blue by the door walked up looked at the line and then stood by the door. Sad thing is she did get to go in before everyone else. The other picture is Jeri in that line... big classes.

The classes were great we had fun and took challenges from the instructor as we could. If the instructor said "Most classes only get 3 pages done" we would bust out 10. If the instructor said "We will not have enough time to finish this project" we would finish it. It was a blast... I tried to get pictures of us in each class, along with a picture of the class. The last pict is of a finished project from one of the classes.

After a full day of classes we headed to the Mall to pick up a slip to wear with our fancy dresses to a Fifth Ave Theatre play Into the Woods. At the mall we found out that JCPenny's does not carry slips anymore and most other stores don't either. Em found a new beautiful dress, and we bought cloaks. Then off to dinner and a show:

After the play we headed back to the Hotel (navigating at my best). We decided to hang out in Jeri and Mona's room and have desert delivered at mid-night... what a great end to day two.

Seattle - Day #1

Okay so we had an absolute blast in Seattle! I am going to try to remember every thing we did in a day by day order but who knows if I will get it all straight!!!

4:40am Pick up from Em meant that I didn't get as much sleep as I would have liked, but the excitement of a trip with the girls was just want I needed after cheer was done. Check in went pretty smooth... after we figured out that the tickets had been reserved using our (Em & I) first names as last names. We found out that the flight was full so our plan of reserving the aisle and window seemed to be backfiring on us. But we figured that we could talk who ever was in the middle into switching. We boarded and we found a husband of another friend in that middle seat!! He was more than willing to NOT be in between us. It was a smooth flight to Seattle and I was still so excited I didn't sleep!

Once in SeaTac we split up, Em & Carol (aka Mom) heading to rent the car and Mona and I to find our bags. Four women - four bags (extras packed - just in case), however only 3 bags came off the plane. Mona's bag got to earn extra miles. We found the car and headed to the find food. Flying makes you hungry... or was it getting up at 4am? I was nominated to be navigator and did a fine job if I say so myself.

After lunch we connected with Jeri and Stephanie and set up to meet at the Hotel. More navigating and no wrong turns. We found the Hotel, got checked in and called Jeri. They were still at the mall... so off we went to find them! (Like we needed an excuse to go to a mall).

The Bellvue Mall is very high class... and to us bargain shoppers a bit spendy. However we did get our hair cut (Em, Carol & I), bought product, and went to Build-a-Bear.

After such a successful trip to the mall we headed to dinner at a FABULOUS restaurant called The Melting Pot. We met up with Em's cousin Chuck and had a blast, we opted for a cheese course and chocolate (we all had a salad too):

It was a perfect end to a first day on a trip... Em and I got back to our room and watched Hairspray thanks to the Hotel movie selections. And then we slept!