Christmas 2009 - Christmas Eve

I decided to post my Christmas blog in two parts because there's so much to talk about! Long gone are the posts when I had nothing to talk about. Some days I wish for that again, but mostly I'm glad to be busy.

Christmas eve morning the girls had me up around 5:30 to go outside and do their business. There was a huge snow drift outside the door that we all had to jump over in order to get out into the yard. Ginger loves running and digging in the snow, especially when it's deep. Maggie loves it too, she just doesn't have the energy that Ginger does! After they did their thing I geared up for some snow shoveling. This time I had plenty of layers on...or so I thought! We'll get to that later. I started on the sidewalk at the back of the house. The snow was so deep I had to shovel it in layers and then find somewhere to put it. I was enjoying myself shoveling there for a while. It's kind of rewarding to see what you're able to accomplish. Then I got to the driveway. Our cars were both parked there (one behind the other) so I could only do the sides. I decided I would just do one side because there were some deep drifts between the houses. Just enough to get a walkway going would work. About halfway through I was getting discouraged because, unlike the sidewalk, I couldn't see that I was making much progress. So I decided I would go shovel the front sidewalk as it makes for a courteous homeowner who shovels their sidewalk for others to walk through. Took me close to an hour to shovel our sidewalk because the snow was so deep. You couldn't tell where the yard ended and the sidewalk began because our yard slopes down as you get to the sidewalk. About 3/4 of the way through, I hear the neighbor fire up his snow blower and whip through his driveway, the neighbor's driveway, and their sidewalks all in the amount of time it took me to finish my sidewalk. NICE! Needless to say I decided once I got my sidewalk done (and I couldn't feel my fingers any longer and my face felt burned from the wind and snow blowing) that I would be done too! If you ever wonder what it would feel like to have novocaine injected into your entire body, just repeat the experience above! It took me a while to warm up.

After I took a brief morning nap, it was off to the races in cleaning the house. I've neglected this a bit since I started working again. Something lit a fire under me and I'm glad it did because now I have the rest of the weekend to relax! Brian did some baking this year. For those of you who don't know, Brian is an incredible cook. I'm often hesitant to try to cook anything new for him because I generally end up asking him to help me cook it! This year Brian wanted lots of pies for Christmas. I fully planned on baking them but since I worked Monday through Wednesday, he decided he would go ahead and try to bake them. I am usually the baker in the house because I prefer to follow recipes, which is why Brian cooks because he can make anything without following one. So it was kind of fun for me to be the one that he was asking questions about whether the pie was done, or what something meant in the recipe. And of course, true to form, everything turned out incredible! As you can see in the picture, he not only bakes his creations, but he eats them too!

We went to a Christmas Eve service with his mom, sister, and our niece. It was a packed house with lots of kids! Aila (our niece) was in full form throughout the service. She is such a little talker (of course gibberish is her dominant language at this time) and pretty much preached through the entire service! Of course we thought it was hilarious but I'm certain that not everyone did. They have to know the kid to know how much fun she is. She would stand in the pews, face the crowd behind her, hold out her hands with her palms up, and just beller out some divine inspiration she had just received!

After the service we headed back to our house for dinner and presents and games. Brian made salmon and veggies (so yummy!) and we all enjoyed his baking and my candy making. Aila opened her presents from Nana and Uncle Brian and Aunt Katie. She got a vaccuum and books from Nana and a bunch of coloring things and baby doll accessories from us. One of the accessories was a baby doll toilet that made a flushing sound. Aila cracked us all up when she proceeded to try to sit on the toilet herself. Unfortunately for her, our house isn't exactly kid friendly so most of our time was spent running around after her pulling things out of her hands. And just like most kids on Christmas Eve, we could not get her to go to sleep so the adults could have play time. So we ended up keeping one eye on her and the other on our games. We tried out the new Wii game my brother and sister-in-law got us. That was pretty fun! And then we did some competitive bowling. After one game it was decided that Jan and Steph would hit the road as Aila needed to go to bed and the snow was coming down!

After everyone left, Brian and I spent a few minutes reminiscing about the day and then I promptly fell asleep from the long day I had. Of course our thoughts throughout the day were with our family members across the country that we miss and love. We hope you all had as wonderful and memory making day as we did!