Babies' First Christmas

We had two nephews born in 2010 so it was thier first Christmas this year!  Of course, they had no idea what was going on but it was fun for the adults! 

This is Cayson.  He will turn 1 in January.  I hadn't seen him since summer so he had changed alot!  He took his first steps the week before Christmas so he was toddling all over! 

This is Jack.  He turned 8 months old on December 21.  I like to think of him as "Mr. Cheeks"!  Both of babies love chewing on their cardboard baby books, eating Gerber Graduates baby snacks (they look like Cheetos for babies!) and exploring. 

We tried to get a nice picture of all the kids and of course the babies were noncompliant.  I think it's cuter that way anyway!

Cayson got tired and snuggled up in a Vikings blanket! 

We had a lovely time at our 3rd Christmas celebration...and our third huge meal in 48 hours!  

I hung around until the evening of the 27th when Andrea and I left to go back to Fargo.  Jake, although he seemed exhausted and overstimulated from being at the farm for 5 days, didn't want to leave with us!  He stood in the doorway with my mom and wouldn't leave!   

Andrea finally lured him out with a pepperoni stick.  He, and most dogs, find those things irrisistible!

On a sad note, my sister in law and her family lost their cat, Smithers/Smitty recenty.  I only met him a few times but he was a very nice cat and I wish I could have petted him one last time!  They adopted him from the Humane Society last year.  He was two years old. 

Christmas Celebrations

Wow, it's over (well, not really...the 12 days of Christmas have just started) but the main event has passed.  Ours was crazy, as usual.  I can't believe it.  Last year I had several blog posts about my favorite Christmas stories and songs and memories that were long and elaborate.  I didn't really rise to the occasion this year, mostly because I have a job and in December last year I didn't!  So I did my best, I guess! 

On Christmas Eve we spend the evening at Justin's aund and uncle's house.  It is a night of excessive eating.  There is always a traditional visit from Santa!   

That is nephew Dylan getting his present from Santa!  It's so funny watching the kids and how astounded they are! 

I made Justin pose for a Christmas photo!

We arrived back at my parents' house around 11, where my extended family was still opening gifts!  I was glad to make it back so my grandparents could see us open our gifts from them. 

On Christmas morning I woke up early, as I always do!  I admit I still love the idea of presents under the tree and in the stockings!  It is a remnant of childhood that I will always keep with me I think...

 Presents!  Haha.  I got some good ones, including a fancy sewing machine from Justin. 

I caught poor Jakey lurking outside the window.  I'm sure he could hear the commotion and wanted to be inside with us!

It didn't take long for the house to start resembling an episode of the TV show "Hoarders"!  Don't worry, those bags of trash were discarded in a timely manner!

Around lunch time more visitors came and we had another round of presents and festivities.  

 My aunt Kris gave me these very nice potholders!  I love them! 

My grandma surprised me with an ornament that has hung on her tree for about 26 years...it is a framed baby picture of me!

It was around the time when darkess was descending when an unusual event happened.  We were sitting in the living room and Justin noticed that something strange was running by outside the window!  It was a horse...and another horse!  And then more horses!  Someone's horses were on the loose and roaming the countryside.  They explored the yard, checked out Dad's new shop (it doesn't have doors yet) and finally got down to business grazing in the pasture (yes, there is a pasture although it hasn't been used for grazing animals since the 1960's!).  My mom called our neighbor who lives down the road about 2 miles and owns horses but no one was home.  The horses, although gigantic, were calm and not hurting anything so we just went back to our festivities.
 

They spent the night and continued to mill around the yard until the neighbor showed up the next day, most likely after following the trail these huge animals blazed in the snow.  Justin and I were celebrating Christmas with his family in Grand Forks (pictures of this will come later...there were babies there so I thought I'd give that Christmas a separate post) so we missed the action. 

He had a bucket of food and called out to them and the gathered around!  Then he started to lead them down the driveway!

Soon they started walking on their own toward their home!  I love how they got in a single file line!  They seemed like nice animals and made a very idyllic scene when they were calmly grazing surrounded by the frosted trees!  I'm glad their owner found them so they could get home!

Oh Come Oh Come Emmanuel

It is almost Christmas!  Once the 20th arrives I really start to feel the anticipation.  It is such a festive time and also such a mysterious time.  I used to love the advent candles in church and how each week brought us closer to Christmas. When I was younger I could barely contain my excitement for the arrival of Christmas.  I loved the idea of getting presents but I also could feel deeper meaning.  The last week of school before break was always full of fun activities such as our school concert (yes, I thought that was fun although I know many people didn't!).  In elementary school one year we did a watered down version of the Nutcracker where the older students got to wear costumes and do little dances on stage while the rest of the school sang in the background.  I was a "Candy Flute"  and I really wish I had a scanned photo of that!  We wore these big cardboard tubes with candy cane stripes and it was pretty silly.  I think everyone's parents just laughed at the whole production.  In high school I was usually a bit more nervous because I was the piano accompanist for at least one song each concert.  The Christmas songs were easy though! 

In addition to the concerts there was usually a "fun day" where the whole school spent an afternoon playing trivia and other games in the gym.  This day was special becaues we could eat candy and drink soda during school!  There was also a boys basketball game with a larger, rowdier crowd than usual because the college students were home visiting.  These activities made the time pass by faster, although my brother and sister and I were not too busy to dig around in the wrapped presents my mom placed under the tree ahead of time and do obnoxious things like count who had more boxes addressed to them. 

I was home this weekend and saw Allan, shopped, wrapped presents and went to a Christmas party.  I forgot my camera so I don't have any new pictures.  I have this one that I took a few weeks ago of our nativity scene.  My mom gave it to me as a shower gift.  I like the bright colors. 



Garfield!

I just spent all day shopping with my mom and sister.  We have a huge capacity and tolerance for shopping.  My feet feel like I had a rough basketball practice in new shoes.  It is definitely Christmas!  When I got home and turned on the TV the Charlie Brown Christmas special was on!  That is such a cute Christmas special.  

My favorite part, and I'm sure many people agree with me, is the part where he tries to salvage the dignity of little sad Christmas tree.   I am the same way...when I buy plants at a greenhouse I always feel bad for the ones that look kind of wilted or that have a broken stems because I want to bring them back to health! 

Charlie Brown is not my favorite Christmas cartoon special, although my favorites have not been shown on TV in years.  The winner is the Garfield special.  I looked it up just a few minutes ago and learned that it has not been shown on TV since 2000.  I can't imagine why!  In the story, Garfield, Jon and Odie go to the farm where Jon grew up for Christmas.

As a young child, I remember watching this before we ever moved to ND and even after we did I have never really thought about how Jon's family Christmas and background is similar to my own!  In my reasearch, I learned that Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield, grew up on a farm in Indiana (where he had many pet outdoor cats).

The farmhouse he depicts even looks kind of like ours, although we don't have a windmill!  Also, Jon and his brother revert to acting like silly kids on Christmas and wake each other up very early in the morning because they are so excited.  My brother still does that!  Haha. 
 

I love the scene where they light the tree and they all ooh and aaahhh with exhaggerated facial expressions! 

Awwww...although they pester each other they really love each other!

In a very touching scene Jon's grandma was sitting quietly and reflecting on Christmases past and told Garfield about how she still misses Grandpa, especially around Christmas. 

When I was thinking about Garfield I remembered the even more rare "Claymation Christmas".  It was not a specific story but instead a medly of music videos featuring clay characters such as the California Raisins. 

I had completely blanked the "Carol of the Bells" video until I was searching Google images for screen shots from the special and saw this picture! 

On another subject, I have been meaning to get a picture of Andrea and Kirk's Christmas light display for a few weeks now and finally did so tonight.  We got several inches of snow last night so they were all frosty and snow covered. 

 The pillar looks very nice!  There are some lights on the other side of the house too but I didn't want to make the neigbors wonder what was going on so I didn't get a shot of those!

I mentioned my tree in Bismarck before but I also brought this mini tree for my room here.  My mom bought me this little one when I was living my dorm room my freshmen year of college.  I used it all through college and law school until we got the bigger tree. Roommate and I used to put our presents for each other under it! I still put lights on it every year because I think it's cute. 

Christmas Cards

Last week I ordered some Christmas cards from Shutterfly.com.  For the past three years I have tangled with Wal-Mart for this service and thought it was time for a change.  Wal-Mart around Christmas is not my favorite place to be!  The shipment was waiting for me when I got home from work this afternoon.  It was strange because there were two boxes instead of one and andrea and recieved hers last week and hers only required one box. 

I ripped open one of the boxes and my heart instantly started racing...I could see a green background with a candycane in the envelope window and I had ordered a snowflake themed card.  Uh-oh...the cards intended for a family I don't know with a little blond daughter and announced a new baby on the way.  Definitely not ours!  Haha.  I quickly ripped open the other box and was thrilled to find my own order, with every card accounted for. 

I was excited to see my cards and thought of the mom excitedly waiting for her cards to arrive and went online to see what to do about order mix ups.  I couln't find anything on the website about recieving the wrong order.  It only covered returning orders with mistakes.  I called the 800 number and waited on hold for about 15 minutes (not so unlike Wal-Mart after all!)  When I finally spoke to a rep. and explained what happened he told me to throw the cards away for the other customer's privacy.  I said I would and asked if he wanted the names of the people on the card so they could be contacted.  He said no and that they would call on thier own when their order didn't come!  That kind of upset me because I felt bad knowing that they would be waiting.  Christmas is only 11 days away! 

So...I did something that might or might not be strange to some people...I looked up the mom's name on Facebook and sent her a message telling her what happened so she could contact Shutterfly as soon as possible.  Nice or creepy?  What do you think?  I think I would like to know if I were her. 

Who knows when our cards will be sent out...hopefully within the next week!  I know everyone is so excited!  Haha I bet. 

Christmas Tree

A few weeks ago, before Thanksgiving, I set up out Christmas tree in Bismarck.  I was sad while I did it because I knew I wouldn't get to enjoy it very much.  Here it is, all finished! 

 The skirt is kind of a mess.  Allan likes to burrow under it and it is a slippery velour type fabric so it slides around on the wood floor alot.  It needs some presents to hold it in place! 

I tried my different camera settings to try to make the lights look more twinkly.  This is one of the better ones.  I mix traditional lights with a few strands of larger bulbs.  This is the 4th year that I have used these lights and the inevitable finally happened this year.  A few strands of lights were non-functional so I had to go buy some new ones.  Those things are so irritating. 

Between Justin and I we have quite a few ornaments already at this early stage in our adult lives!  There are almost too many to fit on the tree!  I have a few favorites that I have taken from my mom's stash over the past few years.  My all time favorite is this one. 

I don't know why I have always like this little felt Christmas tree.  I think it is so cute!  It has been around for years and I have a vague childhood memory of being at some kind of craft fair or store and my aunt Kris helping me pick it out.  Kris, do you remember this happening or is it my imagination?!

I found two new ornaments that we had recieved last year that I had forgotten about. 

The little snowman has the name "Al" on it.  My mom gave one to me and one to Andrea (hers says "Jake").  The other one is a "New Home" ornament!  Very cute.

Speaking of Allan, he was interested in climbing up in the tree right away so I left it up without decorations for most of the day so he could explore it and get bored with it before I put on the decorations.  He likes to take ornaments off the bottom so I put the plastic unbreakable ones and the more generic, less sentimental ones (such as ones I purchased at Old Navy on clearance) so he can satisfy his urge to tamper with them without hurting anything!

He was very interested in the tree skirt!  I think he thinks it is a blanket!  That's OK with me because it lead to many cute photo opportunities!

 Awwww...so cute!

Speaking of cute, I couldn't help resurrecting this photo I took last year when he was just a little guy and climbing in the tree for the first time.  I tried to catch another cute moment similar to this one as I was putting the tree up this year but failed. 

I love the soft, whimsical look of it! 

As far as my weekend, I spent all day yesterday drinking and watching NDSU sports.  It was a really fun day except for the unfortunate football loss :(  At least the basketball team beat UND by quite a bit!  Justin was hunting (it's muzzle loader season.  For those unfamiliar that is a different kind of hunting gun.  I just had to look up how to spell muzzle.  I don't know if I've every typed that word before!) but didn't have any success. I can't imagine...it was so freezing all weekend!

Deck The Halls

I miss being at my house right now and I think about my lovely Christmas tree glowing in the window but at least I get to see alot of familiar decorations at Andrea's house.  She has a railing that is perfect for "decking" with decorations!  I love what she did this year!  Those ornaments were made by my Grandma Dorothy.  The needlework is a traditional Norwegian method that originates in the Hardanger region of the country.  It would be very romantic if she had learned it from her ancestors as an art that was passed down through the generations but she actually learned it from a minister's wife in the 80's, I believe.  Either way, she is very good at it and her work is perfectly done.  It is not possible to find a mistake in anything she makes.  She gives each of her grandchildren a Christmas ornament featuring Hardanger needlework every year at Thanksgiving and we each have between 10 and 15 ornaments.  Andrea and I have small trees so all of them don't fit on them (well, they would if we didn't have any other ornaments but we do because we have been given ornaments since we were children!).  I love how Andrea hung some of them on the garland. 

 Very festive and out of reach of their snoopy dog! 

Oooh yikes!  Well...they are almost out of reach!  I have never seen him do this before tonight when I took this picture! 

Speaking of misbehaving animals, Justin sent me this picture a few minutes ago.  It is the wine rack/cocktail bar in our kitchen.  It seems that sometime during the day Allan decided to check it out and broke one of my martini glasses

What a little brat!  He's lucky that martini glasses are not a heavily used item in our house.  I have so many impractical peices of glassware!  I wish I had a picture of the collection of martini/wine/champagne/bourbon glasses, flutes, decanters and snifters that Justin and I have accumulated through years of proms (my junior class picked some ridiculous martini glass with a twirly stem to drink our punch from at prom.  A few weeks later my mom broke it when she was cleaning.  Fortunately there were a few extras so she quickly got a hold of our class advisor to reserve one before she broke the news to me!  I still have the replacement and haven't had a drink from it ever!) college fraternity and sorority formals and our wedding.  Allan, I guess you are forgiven.  Who could stay mad at that cute little kitten?!

Oooh I Forgot About This...

I was in Bismarck this weekend and it snowed all day and all night on Saturday. Justin went hunting early on Saturday morning. When he got up he looked out the window and said that there was snow on the ground. I haven't seen serious snow this year...wherever it happens I am conveniently somewhere else! I decided I wasn't going to shovel on Saturday because I knew it was going to keep snowing. On Saturday night it really picked. I went out for a few hours and when I left the bar there was considerable accumulation on my car! It was light and fluffy and went up my sleeves when I was brushing it off...brrrr!

On Sunday morning there was no avoiding it...I had to try to remove the snow from the driveway. Oh, how I loath shoveling snow. I have spent most of my life living in a place where my dad takes care of high volumes of snow with large machinery and shovels are rarely needed. I wouldn't mind a stoop or a sidewalk but clearing our whole driveway is a time consuming and tiring ordeal. Our driveway is so long! I got started but after about 20 minutes and not much progress I went inside and called Justin and told him I wasn't going to shovel anymore and he could use the snowblower when he got home.

I was sitting in the living room, with the TV up loud so I could hear over the sound of snowblowers running at my neighbors' houses, when I saw snow swirling nd flying out the window. My neigbor was clearing our driveway with this snowblower! He has a habit of going up and down the block and clearing the sidewalks and he must have seen my poor attempts and shoveling and taken pity.  Very nice!

I put up the Christmas tree...I will do a post about it later but here are a few pictures as a preview...

What's this?

Hmmm....looks fun!

Ooooh, my little Christmas kitten!

I'm Getting in the Spirit...

It is November 18, which means that Christmas is five weeks away.  Today was cold like winter, not fall, and when it is cold I feel like shopping.  OK, I feel like shopping all the time, regardless of the season, but the idea of a warm, bright mall was very appealing when I left work today.  I was delighted but not surprised to find the mall in full Christmas regalia, with the lit pine boughs and big red shiny ornaments hanging in the corridors and the stores displaying sweaters, mittens and hats in the windows.   Oh, I love it!  I know I am a sucker but I am affected by holiday merchandising. I also love to hear Christmas music when I shop.  I am not 100% a sucker...I know that the beautiful sweaters and wool coats and mittens will be 40% as soon as New Year Day arrives and 60% by February and that no smart shopper buys winter hats and mittens in November.  But it's really fun to look!  During my browsing I found a summer dress I wanted from Macy's that was originally $118 and today cost $23.00.  Now I need a trip to Mexico so I can wear it! 

I am going to Bis this weekend and might put up the Christmas tree. I think it is pretty early but I won't be home for a few weeks after this weekend and I would like it to be waiting for me the next time I am there. We have a tall and very slim fake tree that my mom bought both Andrea and I on clearance a few years ago. This will be its 4th Christmas and it is fine for now. It certainly doesn't fool anyone and there is no question that it is fake. I fantasize about one day having a very real looking fake tree (or maybe a real tree...who knows) that looks something like these beautiful trees from Pottery Barn's catalogue.  Have I mentioned before that being a Pottery Barn display room designer (or IKEA or Crate and Barrel) is a fantasy job of mine?  Being the designer of Christmas spreads would be the ultimate fantasy!

The red Santa theme is always a good choice. 

I love how this one incorporate's words!  I would take it beyond just "Happy Holidays" and print the lyrics of a Christmas Song.  Maybe "O, Christmas Tree"!

This one has very nice fake snow!  I love the look.  I also love how there are two trees in the shot.  How festive!  I know alot of people, such as my mom and Justin's mom, have two trees in separate rooms of the house (Oh, to have a large house!) but I have never seen them right next to each other.  It looks cute with real trees.  It's kind of like a forest.  It would look pretty bad with fake trees though. 

I love the look of the trees with very short needlesas opposed to the varity with very long needes that look fluffy.  They are all nice, but I prefer the short needles.  These PB pictures reminded me of this photo I scanned...

That is my granparents' tree from the mid-1950's.  My grandma said it was her first Christmas tree that she had after they were married.  It is not as full as the catalogue trees yet reminds me of them.  The catalogue ones have a vintage feel!  The tinsel is a nice touch. Although they didn't have a large ornament collection the tree still looks special. Tinsel always adds alot to a Christmas tree! 

If our tree is taken out this weekend expect some photos next week!

Oh, and P.S....a few posts ago I linked to Justin's mom's blog about China...I checked it daily waiting for posts and no update came and she emailed and said that her new blog has now been shut down by the Chinese Communist censorship just as the old one was.  How annoying and dissapointing!  Come on, China!