Stollen

Well, you definitely know Christmas is coming when Don bakes his first batch of stollen, a German sweet bread. Here is the dough as it's rising, and then the finished product.  My job is to decorate the cooled loaves with icing and candied fruit.  It was yummy!

Decorating for Christmas

My favorite time of the year is Christmas!  The day after Thanksgiving, we get down our many boxes of Christmas ornaments and start transforming the house from an autumn theme to a Christmas Wonderland!  I put on my iPod Christmas playlists, make a chai tea latte, and munch on sugar cookies from Hillcrest Bakery as I take out each ornament and recall the history behind it.  Needless to say, this takes a lot of time and a lot of cookies!

Travel Trailer Snow Village

Coffee, anyone?

Poinsettia from Flower World

Arrangement on oak cabinet

Polly and her Christmas Dog

An Autumn Hike After Thanksgiving

After the intensity of the holiday week and all of the cooking and cleaning we did, we escaped to Duvall the weekend after Thanksgiving for a hike along the Snoqualmie River Trail.  It was an incredibly beautiful day after all of the gloomy weather of the past weeks, and we enjoyed the lovely area.  Polly the Dog always gets a good workout with hundreds of new sniffs and miles of trail to walk.

Dave's 41st Birthday

Since Dave was born a few days before Thanksgiving in 1974, his birthday is always on or near the holiday.  It's a great time to celebrate with all of our friends and family, and he enjoys his gifts and special treats.

Here's Dave and Kaila--Kai seems to be enjoying her caramel apple! I'm sure her dentist won't approve.  :(

Thanksgiving Scavenger Hunt

After our Thanksgiving dinner (and before the 'turkey coma' kicked in), we all took our official Scavenger Hunt List and went outside to see who could get all of the items on the list first.  It was wild, running around the neighborhood, trying to find some elusive items.  But we all made it!  Matt and Kaila tied for First Place!  Nice work!

You could see Kaila's tonsils!

Super girls!

Getting the Pies Ready for our Customers

Maltby Pie Company was busy around Thanksgiving this year!  We baked 10 pies in all, delivered some of them, and had the remainder ready for pickup!

Here's the assembly line of boxed goods ready to meet their owners.  It was so much fun making these for our friends and family.

Giving Thanks 2015

We decided this year to make Thanksgiving truly a time of giving thanks and giving back in any way we could.  Our first task was to cook a memorable Thanksgiving dinner for our family and spend the day together, talking and laughing and getting caught up on the details of each other's lives.  This included lots of pie and whipped cream and an outdoor scavenger hunt this year.

It was so nice to sit around our big pine table and linger over dinner and dessert and be face to face with our loved ones.  We have so much to be thankful for.

Carving the Turkey

The Whole Family

Pies, pies!