New Year's Eve

We spent New Years with Angela, Jon, Eric & Mickey at Sea Grill resteraunt in downtown Tacoma. We spent the countdown at the Swiss (I do NOT recommend it), and then spent the rest of the evening playing poker and talking at Angela's house. Cheers to 2008!!!

Dinner with Friends

The day after Christmas we went out with the Kumakuras and the Huffs at Tokyo Steakhouse in Federal Way (one of our favorite resteraunts). Afterward, we stopped at Tyler's house to visit with his mom and dad - we love it when we get the chance to see them!

Christmas Day

We woke up at my parents on Christmas morning and spent the morning opening presents. The house was so cozy ... we had a fire going and music playing. Then we headed over to Stephen's parents for another Christmas morning. Then it was off to Tony and Cat's house for Christmas dinner. It was Cat's first year doing Christmas, and she did a great job. They have a beautiful - and gigantic - house. Finally, we headed back to the Hansens to visit a little before coming home to our precious little Lily.

Christmas Eve

Christmas got extremely busy starting with Christmas Eve. First, we headed over to my parents - the Cozine's - to celebrate with Linda, Louie, Lisa, Stephen, Nadine, Bob, Scott and his new wife, David, Ruth, and Jordan. We spent a couple of hours there before heading over to the Hansens. There we visited with the Christians, the Johnsens, the Hansens, Grandma Annabelle, and a heavily sedated Max. We had dinner at the Hansens and stayed until pretty late before heading back to my parents to go to sleep.

Christmas Eve Morning

We really wanted to have Christmas morning in our new house. But, with all the festivities of Christmas day looming over us, we decided to celebrate Christmas morning on the morning of Christmas Eve and open our presents a day early. We had so much fun. Stephen, me, and Lily opened our presents in our pjs, drank mimosas, and listened to Christmas music under our very own Christmas tree.

Our House at Christmastime

Here are some pictures of our first house at Christmas....

Christmas Tree Farm

We got our first real Christmas tree this year! Went out to a tree farm - Lincoln High School's farm - with mom and dad to chop down our tree. It is an absolutely beautiful nobel fir.

Thanksgiving 2007

We did Thanksgiving a little different this year and spread it out over two days. On Thursday we had an early dinner at the Cozine's ... as usual. Jason joined us this year, which was an extra special treat. We hope he will make stopping at our house a new tradition in years to come. Unfortunately, Aunt Deb had a medical procedure on Wednesday before Thanksgiving, so we decided to move the Hansen Thanksgiving to Friday. Instead of spending Thursday night at Deb's and Friday night in Portland with the Cozines, we went straight to Portland, did a little shopping on Friday morning and afternoon, and then went to see the Johnsens, Christians, and the Hansens. I (Carly) was pretty sick so I was taking a lot of dayquill to make it through the holiday. Stephen had an absolute blast playing tons of video games with the cousins and doing a little dirt-biking.

Halloween

Our first Halloween in the new house! We had a ton of trick-treaters ... adorable little princesses, cowboys, butterflies, and monsters...

We waited until the last minute to get halloween decorations and learned a valuable lesson: do NOT wait until the night before Halloween to buy pumpkins! All that was left were a couple of rotten ones. So, we ended up with no pumpkins, but we did have a faux-tombstone with a flashing red light (one of the few things left at BigLots). How fun :)

We met one of our neighbors last night. Her name was Joanne and she had a little cowboy glued to her hip. Seemed really nice. This is going to be a perfect neighborhood to start a family in.

Skateboarding Stephen

One of Stephen's favorite things about our house: the long hill leading down to it. After a long, hard day at work, he loves to blow off steam by longboarding down it. He's kind of adorable when he longboards - looks like a surfer or something. Sometimes people even come out of their houses to watch. Here are some pics: