Home for the Holidays

 

Thanksgiving. 

I love Thanksgiving.

I love the smells. The food.  The family.  The love.

All of it.

And this Thanksgiving I got to go home and celebrate with my family and also enjoy 70 degrees of sunshiny awesomeness.
  
The week was awesome, relaxing and a chance to catch up with those I love.  We did a lot of eating and a lot of hanging out and it was a great change to our normally busy lives.  The week flew by and before we knew it it was Thanksgiving day and my Grandparents came over to celebrate with us.  We had enough food to feed a small army, but it was still delicious many meals later.

We had the works- ham, turkey, green been caserole, stuffing, sweet potato caserole, rolls, apple pie, pumpkin pie etc. It was mmm mm gooood. 

After the meal we cleaned up the kitchen sat back and relaxed before going out in the woods and partaking in an actual Thanksgiving tradition (not ours, but the settlers).  Target shooting.

*Always use extreme caution when handling any sort of fire arm- they can be extremly dangerous*

We've never gone out as a family to shoot so it was an experience all in itself and Callie-girl had never shot a weapon.  Needless to say she was stoked to be able to do so!

We had a blast finished and then finished the night with some hot cocoa.

Meet Ema.

After I got married my parents bought a Havenese puppy and she is a funny little dog!

Also, a little bundle of a cuteness :)

She is one well loved pup ;)

Mom, Dad, Chris and Callie.
We love you guys so much!! Thanks for the awesome week and your continued love and support, I couldn't ask for a better family!
Love,

Carrie and Joel

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side note:

 

 Happy Birthday to my Daddy!!

I hope you have an awesome day!
Wish we could be there to celebrate with you.
Love you bunches!!

Lake Curlew

We recently celebrated Memorial Day weekend, and with that we took a family trip to Lake Curlew in Republic WA. Getting there was a journey in itself....

 Joel's Aunt and Uncle opened up their lake house for a big family gathering (about 18 people and 5 golden retrievers).  We had a a great time, the weather forecast was bleak, but thankfully God gave us gorgeous weather (a sunny 70 degrees).



The Larson Clan decided to have a fishing derby, er, darby (since you have to have a license from the state to actually have a fishing derby.... we improvised).  Two days to catch the biggest fish. There was a list in the living room where we could include our "big catch".  Thing is, I have never gone fishing, didn't really have that much of an opportunity while I was little, and as much as I wanted to believe it would, dangling a string in the water with no hook was not going to catch me a fish.  Johannes was kind enough to show me how to cast a line and bait a hook and with that I was off! Well, sort of, many failed attempts at casting lines later, I was off.





Maybe it's because I was more determined to catch fish then the others, or maybe it was all just beginners luck, either way I managed to catch 7 fish that weekend, my longest one a grand total of 16 5/8"  giving me second place (next to Zac's 17 1/2" whopper).  There is a picture of me holding one of my fish out there somewhere.... I'll track it down eventually...

And to be completely honest, I can't wait to go fishing again! (Though I'll continue to leave the cleaning of the fish up to Joel.....)

Love,
Carrie

Paul and Lily

I love being able to take pictures of them as they grow up and it's amazing how fast they do!! Here are some pictures of my adorable niece and nephew!

Happy Fathers day Mike! You have two beautiful children ;)































annnd My favorite from the day... I love these two!