Christmas Cookies with Tamanna

COOKIES!

Tamanna had never made sugar cookies before, so we braved the roads and fetched her from her apartment Christmas eve so she could make them with us. It's a tradition in my family to make up plates of sugar cookies and pass them out when we go caroling.

Tamanna rolling out dough

Auraleen and her mother in law Linda cutting out cookies

Tamanna proudly displaying her pan of sugar cookies ready for the oven

A view of our cookie making table

Tamanna using a chop stick to paint a snowflake cookie. She was really good at decorating them

The finished products

Mom helping in the kitchen

Snowin it up! Cause WA hardly ever does this

SNOW>>>SNOW>>>SNOW>>>SNOW>>>>SNOW>>>SNOW>>>SNOW>>>SNOW

My friend Mike and I building a snow fortress

And we gots competition. My bro Stephen and our friend Jeff made one too

And my parents

The fight is on!

Mom and Dad totally cheated with those sleds

A view of my backyard. We got about 6 inches of snow

Making a snow man: a common occurrence when lots of snow is present

His head ended up being too lumpy to be a snow man, so we opted to make a polar bear

What better way to end the day than getting a free ride on the sled

Yup! In all my years living in WA (all 22 of 'em) I've never ever seen SO MUCH SNOW! A record setting winter fo sho. Let's do it again next year. I didn't mind all the time off from work ;)

The day I morphed into an Indian :)

Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo benefits...benefits of having friends from other countries? Cultural experiences

I have this friend Tamanna Bedhi from northern India. She's in the U.S. for a couple months for work and so ya know we've been hanging out; I've been showing her some fun stuff to do during the holidays in WA. So the other day I went over to her apartment in Redmond and she made me some Daal and Roti (mmmm DELECTABLE!)...and ya know afterwards we decided to have a photo shoot (cause that's what girls do, it's obviously a universal thing) so she totally dressed me up in a traditional Indian dress and took some pics. She even painted a bendi between my eyebrows so I'd look extra authentic.

It was way fun! The pants are super skinny...forget skinny jeans, I think these pants top 'em or are definitely on the same level. They're not made out of stretchy fabric that would stick to you though, they're just cut so that they narrow more and more towards the bottom.

Playing in Seattle during the turkey times...

Here's some fun we had in Seattle when Cami & Rodney first got into town for Thanksgiving

The Seattle fountain! I totally grew up dancing in that fountain to the music they play as the water shoots out. Fun memories!

Stephen and I were playing around with my camera near a shop window and ended up with this psychedelic thing..lol. I think it looks pretty tight :D

What do we see?!?!?!!!!

Mom's taking a look too. Pretty pretty views

Stephen's a fountain performer

Cami had never been to good ol Pike Place Market, so we made of trip of it while the newly-weds were here.

Dude! Check it...the man's making melodious noises with a massive saw and a violin bow. I love these performers in Seattle, they're so amazing!

I'm happy to be riding the elevator.. that or I'm taking random pics of myself and seeing how reflective those walls can be.

Cami y yo! I love this girl and even more so now that she's my sista!

Rodney's Hitched!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yup, Rodney done n' got hitched! Here's some pics from their wedding

Yea, don't know what happened in October, apparently not much. But here's November and Rodney's hitched now! Their wedding stuff basically took up the entire month.

And I was in the wedding. My dress was a bag when it was first made, my mom had to do a bunch of alterations to it. Oh the joys of bridesmaid dresses ;)

They look so sweet as they cut this cake.

They were pretty ruthless afterwards though ;)

LOL the other bridesmaids imagined their bouquets into Star Wars light sabres
I stood by and laughed, I have a soft spot for flowers.. I couldn't bruise mine that easily

The cake was beautiful! Simple but elegant. I had to include it

Christina the caterer

MMMMmmmmmmm TASTY! right? Yup. My mom assigned me to cater Rodney and Cami's open house they had here in WA. So I rolled up my sleeves and BAKED.. and baked and baked and baked and baked.. get it?

The end of September....yup I'm a procrastinator

The Sprecken family enjoying the game

Some of the Beacham's (this definitely isn't all of us) at the game

Aubrey and her daddy fell asleep on the way home

She had taken a nap before the game in her cute cheerleader outfit too

Yup! That was the BYU game....way back in September. Jus shows how good I am at posting to this thing :)

It was an excellent game. It was really fun having Auraleen and Cody and Aubrey there too. And BYU WON!!! Which made it even more enjoyable.

Good times, good times!