christmas 2013

I can't believe Christmas was two days ago and we already drove Tyler to the airport to go back home yesterday.  This year it ended up only being Toby, Tyler, and Kelsey who were here with us.  Calley called us on Christmas Eve to tell us they were all feeling under the weather, so we'll have to reschedule for a different day with them.  I was bummed about it at first, but then I realized we can just extend Christmas a little bit longer now.  I like that.  I'm not ready for the holidays to be over just yet.

For the first time ever, we did not get up before the crack of dawn to open our gifts.  Instead we slept in, cooked a big breakfast of belgian waffles and breakfast casserole, and opened our presents later in the morning.















Toby got a new piano keyboard to go with his laptop.



Oh, this Chewbacca.  Luke has always wanted one of those Chewy backpacks you can get at Disneyland, but they are soooo expensive.  There had to be another place where you could buy them, so I did a google search and found the exact same ones on amazon for $10 cheaper!  And look . . . isn't he thrilled?  What a great moment when he opened it.







Toby is modeling the vibrating slippers he got for me.  I really love them.



Kelsey and Tyler got a new ipad mini.







We spent the day playing with our new gifts, watching bits of A Christmas Story 24 hour marathon (and Mary Poppins), took some naps, went visiting, and then there was Christmas dinner.

The menu:

smoked turkey
homemade cranberry sauce
potato casserole
corn
green beans almondine
rolls
apricot salad

pumpkin cheesecake
blackberry cobbler

Luke was all decked out in Disney for bedtime (the jammie bottoms had Mickey Mouse all over them), and he also got Finley for Christmas (the flying monkey from Oz the Great and Powerful).





Mistletoe.



We are incredibly grateful for our kids being here with us for Christmas this year.  Having our boys home is the greatest.  We've come to never take our family time for granted anymore.  With our kids being busy with their own lives and living far away from us, we cherish every single minute we can have with them.  Hope you all had a happy Christmas too.  I'm looking forward to our time with the grandkids next, their presents are waiting for them!

happy birthday toby!

Happy, happy birthday Toby!!  We're so thrilled to have you home to celebrate your day with the fam!  We've missed you, and having you home is the best.  May this upcoming year be the greatest one ever.

christmas caroling with amy poehler

I saw this on Monday and it just makes me laugh.  Who doesn't love Amy Poehler? (sorry about the ads, I hate those popping up.  click them off)  (and . . . language alert)



I was amazed how many people didn't know the words to the carols.  But then I have to tell myself, not everybody is as Christmas carol obsessed as I am.

My favorite: "you know me!!  You know me!!!"

decorating = done

All the decorating is done!  Here are a few peeks from around the house:























On this last picture, of the angel on the nativity, I put some rice lights on top of the stable.  Although it looks good at night, its not the look I was thinking it would be.  I think what I need to do is put some dried moss on the roof to hide the wires.  Or maybe just take them off and enjoy the simplicity of the stable.

Remember the snowballs?  I took them down.  For some reason, it began to look too cluttered there in the dining room.

Toby came home last night and he commented that the tree looks a little bit thinner than it used to.  So its not just me who thinks that!  I'm still campaigning for a real tree one of these years.  Maybe next Christmas, who knows?

front porch improvement

Today marks halfway through December, and only 10 days till Christmas.  This is what my front porch looks like.  Don't even bring up lights, because there are no Christmas lights to be found outside.  Yet.  Maybe.

What we have here are my two dead-as-a-doornail mum pots from Sept/Oct/Nov, and half of December.  What can I say?  Life has been super busy and I literally haven't had a minute to do anything about the porch.  It was either raining, or frozen, or something.





Today I decided to do something about it.  Its really been bugging me.  If all I could do was switch out the pots and fill them with pinecones, at least it was something.



A touch of glitter.



It should be twinkly lights and garlands, but this is a start, right?

a saturday date with the granddaughters

Several weeks ago, we planned a date to take the granddaughters to see Frozen.  Luke and I are such Disney geeks . . . we've been waiting for this movie for the last year, so it was kind of torture for us to wait one whole week longer than the rest of our friends to see it.  But it was worth it to see it with the girls.  Remember how I was lamenting about the possibility of snow on that day?  And then it was such a relief to have a no-snow forecast.  Whew.  Anyway, Saturday morning, before we went to Calley's house, we stopped at the car dealer in Bellevue to get my car's oil changed.  While we were waiting for the car, I got a call from Calley, letting me know that Summer just puked all over the place.  Noooo!  I thought everything was going good with the weather report, but we didn't anticipate anyone getting sick and missing the movie!  She was really looking forward to it and I didn't want to go without her.  Maybe she wouldn't be that sick and would feel better by the time we had to leave.

All that wishful thinking about Summer having a miraculous recovery paid off . . . her tummy was still a little rumbly, but she made it through the movie just fine.  And we absolutely loved the movie!

Okay, this is just a side note (and spoiler alert), I haven't heard anybody talk about the Mickey Mouse short "Get A Horse" that they showed before Frozen.  It was amazing!  Keith and I were talking all about it when we were driving home.  That alone was worth the price of the 3-D tickets!  I seriously had to catch myself from believing that was a real stage they were on (if you saw it, you know what I'm talking about).  And the part where the phone rang?  I found myself starting to reach for my purse to make sure I turned off my ringer (that's my ringtone too).  I wonder how many other people have done that.  Awesome.  That's all I have to say about that.



Summer was so thrilled about the coincidence that the day we were going to see Frozen, everything outside was frozen.  The sky was sooooo incredibly clear!  The views were spectacular!  We were so cold!  Not like the current low temps in Utah or Minnesota, but hey, it was still pretty cold.  I had to get some pictures of the girls outside (such good light), and here they are.  Without their coats.





Summer was trying to stay as serene and solemn as was humanly possible.





She did good.  Until about two seconds after this picture, and then she couldn't stop laughing.





Oh sweetheart, I'm sorry.  I know you puked your guts out this morning and now I'm making you stand outside in the 23 degree afternoon.  At least its warmer than the 11 degrees this morning.



Ice skating.  Sort of.





Then there's little miss Claire Bear.  I can't believe I actually got her looking at me.  Lately, I'm the last person she wants to look at.  She loves Keith to death . . . she climbs all over him, follows him, and hugs onto his legs.  She also loves Uncle Lukey too.  But when she sees me, she closes her eyes.  I wish I would have gotten a picture of it, its too funny.  At least I'm in good company, she does the exact same thing to Tyson's sister Emilee.





Abby just got her long hair cut off into a bob.  Pretty adorable.



Love these three!  Can't wait for Christmas!

one step up from a charlie brown tree

Do you go through fake Christmas trees as quickly as we seem to do?  I was under the impression that when you go and spend the big bucks for a beautiful pre-lit tree, you were making a lifetime purchase.  That has not been the case.  I've lost track of how many fake trees we've had.  We used to go to the tree lot or the cut-your-own tree farms, but one year, a long time ago, Costco had the perfect fake tree.  It lasted a few Christmases, but it finally got to the point where we just couldn't disguise it any more.  Since then (like I said), I've lost count of how many we've owned.  I'm not talking about the lights burning out either, because I don't think it ever makes it home with every single light working.  Its the whole structural integrity that fails.

We got our current tree 4 years ago.  Do any of you remember what happened to the previous one?

Which brings me to our current one.  We decided to get a tree with a slim profile.  We store it completely assembled and upright in the garage (totally wrapped in plastic) during the year.  I carefully carried it into the house this year and it just looks . . . sad.

Sad.

Skinny.

Scrappy.

Scruffy.

Nothing like the full, beautifully shaped trees everybody else has, or the stores have, or the tree lots have.  I stared at the tree for a good two weeks, wondering if I could transform it from ugly duckling to swan. (i started putting ornaments on it and then decided to take a "before" picture).

After.  An improvement?  I'm not done (i had to run and pick up luke from the shipyard since its friday, so this is how it looked when i stopped).  I still need to fill in blank spaces and holes.  And hey folks, I'm keeping it real here with the mess around it.  Propping it up on food storage boxes to make it look taller.  Bags and boxes and containers of ornaments and such.  I promise when the mess is picked up and the beautiful piece of taffeta that I drape around the base is in place, it will look more presentable.



Can I just say one thing about the star on top?  I found it at Target a few years ago, the only one they had, and it was so cute and smothered in sequins.  But try to stick it on the top of your tree?  Impossible!!  Every year I wrestle with it to get it to stay upright.  But I have accomplished quite the feat of engineering, propping it from all sides with chopsticks.

It works, what can I say.