Home for the Holidays

Well, the Holidays have come and gone and now it's time to share with all of you the fun things we did and the memories we made. We followed up Thanksgiving with attending the downtown tree lighting ceremony, which of course, got us in gear to get our own tree up and decorating done around the house. The girls are getting big enough to help with alot of the Holiday prepping which makes for special memories for all of us. Lem also continued his tradition of doing 25 Days of Christmas for me. This year he gave me encouraging words and scriptures for each day, and threw in a treat or two here and there too.

We had lots of special events this year (most of which got their own blog entries) including our Annual Wheeles Christmas Party (for grown ups only), Sycely's dance school's performance of Nutcracker Sweets, our Church's Children's Ministry's Christmas musical production and my participation in the Christmas skating show at the mall (all the same weekend, and Sycely had two birthday parties that weekend too!) You can see more pics and read up on the skating show on my Mrs. Alaska blog at: www.mrsak2010.blogspot.com. We were sure to get in plenty of time drinking tea and hot chocolate, watching Christmas movies and enjoying our fire place and hot tub though.

We got to enjoy lots of time with friends visiting Anchorage for the Holidays. The girls had fun playing and visiting with our friend Christina's kiddos, Cailey and Caleb, who were up from Texas. After sharing dinner they decorated a gingerbread house together. We also did our annual Christmas light looking with a dear friend Alaina who was up from Portland. Looking back, we realized we've been sharing this tradition for probably 7 or 8 years now.

The girls enjoyed helping me with the Holiday baking and fudge making. We made about 5 batches of fudge (trying our hand at peanut butter this year for the first time), coconut, candy cane crunch cookies for Santa and gingerbread cupcakes. Lem had the stomach flu on Christmas Eve (likely courtesy of Ella who had it two days before) which gave us lots of uninterrupted (for the most part) time in the kitchen for being girly.

On Christmas Eve we also made reindeer food to sprinkle on the driveway. The girls did well choosing their colors and working together, sharing the glitter. Sycely was a very good helper to her little sister. It was a frigid night, but we got our Christmas duds on and headed over to Nanny and Papas for a family feast of homemade pizza. We went to church after that for our candlelight service. Lem was feeling mostly better, thankfully, so he was able to enjoy those holiday traditions with us. When we got home from church we quickly (did I mention it was -10 degrees!) sprinkled our reindeer food on the driveway and came in to warm up, put out cookies and milk (and apples, at Sycely's insistence that last year she heard Santa was trying to eat healthier-hence the coconut/oatmeal cookies as well) Once the girls were tucked in for the night Lem and I got to "play Santa" and get ready for Christmas morning.

Christmas morning was, as always, a joyful delight with the girls. We opened stockings first and took a break to get our cinnamon rolls into the oven (and a very special LIVE present under the tree) Santa got the girls bunnies this year. They came to us from an adoption/rescue farm in Wasilla and are about 4/5 years old and a father-son pair, even though they look nothing alike! The box was wrapped and ready under the tree so with the girls otherwise occupied we slipped them into the box before we started opening presents, and of course, the girls opened them first. They enjoyed checking things out and exploring their new home while we opened the rest of our presents. Sycely has decided to name her bunny, the white Holland Lop, Mr. Hopps (and I'm thrilled by the originality of the name as it was the name of her pre-school class' bunny last year!) Ella, on the other hand, decided on Silly Billy for hers, the Netherland Dwarf with the black and white dutch markings.

After we finished up with our family Christmas here, the rest of the day was spent at Nanny and Papa's celebrating with them, Unlce Ian and Aunti Kathryn (now that there's a wedding date set we've officially added the Aunti title.) We spent several hours opening presents and stockings there and played some games, napped and watched Christmas Friends episodes until it was time for our Christmas dinner of tasting steak fajitas. That night I ended up with the stomach bug and spent the night NOT sleeping and the next day trying to make up for the lost rest.

Our post Christmas time was spent enjoying our time together as a family, playing with new toys, having fun with new presents (like the bunnies), breaking in the backyard sledding hill, more hot tubbing, and taking in some yummy Tastee Freez ice cream. I did take Sycely to the doctor due to a linger and nasty sounding cough, but they sent us home assuring us it was super common right now and should, as I expected, work itself out, which it did in a matter of days. Sycely and I went on a movie date with Kathryn to see Tangled and then did a trip to the bridal store for a little looking, too.

We shared New Year's Eve with Ian and Kathryn. We had a yummy Mexican dinner at a restaurant downtown then took in the City's New Year's celebration fireworks. We headed back to our house, had some scrumptious cheesecake, then enjoyed sipping pina coladas in the hot tub while taking in a pretty spectacular neighborhood fireworks show. This year the muni allowed fireworks for a few hours on New Year's Eve (they are usually illegal in the city) and though we saw a pretty good (illegal) show in our neighborhood last year, this year was even more festive. We literally were surrounded on all sides by fireworks as we had a relaxing soak.

2010 was a pretty great year for us and we're exciting to see what God has in store for us in 2011. So far, we're already enjoying the abundance of His blessing and provision as Lem has taken on an online class for some extra money (think trip to Hawaii). We're excited to be welcoming a new member to our family on March 11th as Ian and Kathryn start their married life together, and we are certainly looking forward to celebrating our 10th anniversary with a cruise to the Bahamas in just a few months! Hope that your Holidays were warm and that 2011 brings you many blessings of joy!