A Very Merry Christmas

Christmas this year was kind to us. Liz was able to see her kids open the presents she picked out for them earlier this year. A Christmas eve snow storm gave us a beautiful covering of fresh powder on Christmas morning. The air was crisp and the sun shined bright. Anna loved her toys, Ian slept through everything, and Levi and I spoiled each other with gifts.

The Christmas tree was beautiful and Anna loved to play with the different ornaments. It's sad that soon we will need to take it down, as it's starting to rapidly drop pine needles over the floor.

I hope this last Christmas was a good one for you all, and left you feeling love, joy and peace.

Christmas Presents

I feel I need to mention that I am a new owner of a Yamaha Music Keyboard. It's the YPT 300 model and has so many features, I'm still trying to figure them out. Levi has been teaching himself to play and someday I can picture him composing his own stuff. It's been fun to pull out my old music and try to perform something pleasant with my rusty talent.

Also for Christmas I received lots of cute clothes, fun DVD's and a new computer game, Sims 2! For anyone who doesn't already know, I've spent the last year completely addicted to the Sims Deluxe game Levi's dad gave me last year. Now with this new Sims 2 game, I'm staying up super late each night trying to make my Sims 2 people happy and successful. So fun!

With a few cheat codes I found online, I also have rich sims!

Christmas 2006

My dear friend Missy has dared me to post on our Christmas adventure. Being a gal that can't seem to pass up a dare, here I go.

The weeks leading up to Christmas were hectic. Anna and I both got sick with colds, and Levi was finishing up his finals. There was also all the goodie baking to do, and I couldn't pass it up. This year I made every one's favorite Blueberry Pound Cake, English Toffee and the oh so delicious Cranberry-Pecan Rugalach. I ate so much Rugalach, I actually gained 5 pounds over the holidays. I only know this because I weighed myself last night and discovered that I'm at an all time high. Consequently, I joined SparkPeople, a weight loss, lifestyle change program that's FREE (music to my ears). My goal is to loose 25 pounds by June 1st 2007. That means I'll have to loose 2.5 pounds per week. Wish me luck everyone!

Back to the adventures of Christmas: We enjoyed a family party at my parent's home and ate delicious food. We even managed to bring a little of it home with us. There we had the family talent show and were fortunate Levi and I were the least talented performers of the day. My niece played a little jingle on the piano, then Levi and I had the kids join in on a Wiggles Pirate School song. We sang badly, but everyone seemed to have fun.

On the 22nd, Anna was able to ride in an airplane for the first time as we went to Washington to celebrate with Levi's parents. She was the quietest baby on the plane and was also the favorite of at least one flight attendants. She had so much fun playing with Grandma and Grampa. They played with her and tried so hard to teach her to crawl. They were so good at it that Anna took her first crawling steps on Christmas Eve. She also met her uncle Nathan and had fun looking at him (as he and Levi have many similar facial qualities). Once again, we were all spoiled silly in Washington and it was hard to say goodbye and come home.

The festivities were fun, but everyone felt a bit sad this year. My sister in law had recently discovered that her cancer was back and growing fast. We all tried hard to smile even though we all felt the ache in our hearts for her. We know that her treatment will be rough and we wish we could help her fight this cancer better. Our prayers are with you each day Liz!