White Christmas

Dad took the day off on Wednesday and we went to see White Christmas at the Fox with Paul and Linda Day. They went last year and enjoyed it so much, they decided to go again this year and asked us to go with them. We went to the matinee which started at 2 pm. We went early and ate at a diner like place just up the street from the Fox. This is a stage production taken from the movie. The story line is the same, with some small changes. It has most of the songs from the movie with some others added. The singing and the dancing were great! David Ogden Stiers played the general, (he used to be on MASH and he's the voice of the narrator on the Broadway Beauty and the Beast cd we have). It was just a wonderful performance. We are so glad the Days invited us to go.

This morning we are in the middle of a big snow storm. We listened to the list of school closings and they only read the private schools (which was a HUGE list), they just covered the others by saying that ALL public schools are closed! It's supposed to stop this afternoon, our ward Christmas party is at 6:30 pm, in theory it should be over by then, we're just wondering if they'll cancel the party anyway. There's supposed to be another snow storm Sunday morning. We're having our Christmas program in Sacrament meeting Sunday and the choir director wants us there at 8 am. Maybe they'll cancel church? Who knows. I hope you're all safe, and we're praying that Kari and Jana's families get here safely. I hate traveling in the winter, we've had some really close calls doing that. So, we'll hopefully see you all soon.

Yes, he IS our son

Noah is quite the dancing fiend. He will dance whenever, doing whatever. His favorite time to dance is while he is eating or while he's getting in trouble. Today I turned on Riverdance, just to see what he would do. He LOVED it! He stared at the screen for 15 minutes straight and then crawled to the TV, stood up and did this. We are proud of his superior dancing skills...we are hoping they make us good money some day ;)

Yeah, I'm finished for this semester!

I just finished the 2nd part to my accounting exam. I'm finished with school for 2 weeks! Hooray! Then next semester I will have Bus 110, which will be a night class and hopefully I'll have News Writing online. I'm on the wait list for that class though, so if I don't make it in I have enrolled in a physical geography class as a back up, but I'd rather take that one in a different semester so I don't have two classes that I have to go to campus for.

ELF

Dad and I did a new thing Friday night, we went to the ELF Festival at Erwins. ELF stands for Erwin's Light Festival. They have put up a bunch of light displays in the orchard and then take people through it on the wagons. You can also go into the mill and buy hot cider (or cold if you prefer) and donuts. It was windy and cold, but you expect that and bring a blanket to cuddle under and we really enjoyed it. I'm glad they've found another way to make money and not sell the orchard. That's why we decided to go and give it a try. Dad says that if any of you want to go while you're here we would be happy to pay for it.

Various and Sundry

Here's a pic of Joe and Michele's gingerbread. Kurt and I are thinking of either some sort of Gingergiant vs. Gingersaurus Rex motif or possibly The Nightmare Before Gingerbread Christmas theme for next year. We'll see how the mood hits us in a year.

As for Christmas plans, what do the ladies think about doing book club at my house Monday night? We are heading north Tuesday after Kurt gets off work so that will be the only night before Christmas everyone will be in town. Do you think you'll be here in time to make book club, Jana? Alison is picking up the book to read and her and I would like to make dinner for everyone, possibly themed around the book. Let me know.

Also, we'll bring cookies and fudge and such back from Up North but what else should we bring to contribute for food for the weekend after Christmas?

Gingergiant Attack

Last weekend the West family (Joe's parents) hosted their annual gingerbread house building day. We were invited this year, and we had a great time.

To give you some background, we attended a couple of these events before we moved to North Carolina and ended up revolutionizing the whole idea. The first year we went, we fully intended on making the standard pitched-roof, frosting-covered, candy-decorated gingerbread cottage. However, one of our pieces broke and we had to improvise. We made a flat-roofed Florida house, complete with pink walls, a window swamp cooler, and pool. That triggered Joe and Michele's creative juices, and they've haven't done a simple gingerbread cottage since. Others have gotten in on the act, and now it's anything goes on gingerbread construction day.

This year we had the idea to do a village of mini-houses, because they'd be easier to put together and decorate. We didn't know how much Harvey wrangling we'd need to do, so we wanted our idea to be fairly simple. Then Heather had a flash of genius. We'd still make mini-houses. But we added this:


Gingergiant was born!

We baked all of the pieces the night before, including the gingergiant. He's about a foot tall. We used frosting to mortar him to a dowel we brought with us, which was then secured to the base with a screw.

The houses are gingerbread, but their roofs are graham crackers. We miscalculated the roof size when we made them, so the ones we made didn't fit. The snow is frosting, of course. The trees are gummy peppermint leaves. The paths to the doors are made of tiny, candy-coated chocolate kisses bordered by sections of Twizzler Pull-n-Peel. The rubble is broken gingerbread, and dried vegetable bits we found at the bulk food store. Here are some more shots.






If you click on the pictures and visit the flickr pages, you can see bigger versions of the pictures and see a bit more of the detail. There's also some additional commentary from me there.

We had a blast and we're looking forward to next year.

Hooray!!!

I just wanted to shout out that I finished my econ exam about 10 minutes ago. I only got 2 wrong out of 30. That's the best I've done on one of this professor's exams all semester. Now I'm officially finished with that class! One down and one to go. Wish me luck!

Our Family Pictures

These pictures are on three blogs now-mine, this one and the extended family one. So if you've already seen them, so be it. I just wanted to cover all my bases. Here are our family's Christmas pictures that we had taken last week. Click here to veiw them all.

Harvey

I forgot to ask in my precious blog about when Harvey will be at our house. What are the plans for watching him over the holidays?

Christmas Events

I was talking with Hillary last night and it became apparent that many things have been talked about doing over the holidays, but not many of them have actually been scheduled. Therefor, I would like all of you to respond to this blog and let's work them out. 1. Just so everyone knows, will you all tell me when you are planning to be here? 2. Kari, when are you planning to have your friends here? 3. We need to get together to practice the song we are singing in Hillary's ward, sometime on Saturday would be good, I think, what do you think? 4. I thought we could have family dinner on Sunday at Hillary's after we sing, is that alright with you? 5. When can the girls do book club? 6. When can we make the puppets? As far as Christmas day goes, Hillary tells me that Kurt and Heather are staying in Petoskey until Saturday and that the Hicks will come to our house later in the day after they do Christmas morning at home. I'm thinking that the Hairs, Petersons and us will just open our presents in the morning and then we'll do other people's presents when they get here. This all of the stuff going on that I'm aware of, if there is anything else will you please let me know?

Also, Dad says that he has only gotten pictures for Grandma and Grandpa's present from some of you, he still needs them from others. He'd like to get them sent this week. You only need to come up with 3, so work on it please. We're looking forward to seeing everyone soon. Those of you that are driving (which is everyone at one point or another), please remember that it's more important for you to stay alive than to get here. Be sure to check the weather before you come and if it's bad, stay home!

It's been a while since I've had a chance to post. This passed weekend was so much fun. It was great to see Kari, Eric and Noah and to hang out with Kurt, Heather, Mom, Dad and Jim. I so happy to be by family again. I can't wait for Christmas. Then the kids and Charlie had a snow day on Monday to top it all off. It was fun to extend their Thanksgiving break for one more day.

We bought Charlie a new car. It's a 2006 black, two door-hatch-back Focus. He loves it and we are so pleased that he doesn't have to drive around a mini-van anymore. It saves lots of gas that way. We sold the Windstar to Charlie's parents, who sold their car to Charlie's sister, Sabrina, who gave us her car as a trade-in for our Focus. It was a weird transaction, but it worked out best for everyone. We all ended up with better cars than we had before.

Alexis and Makayla had a Christmas program at school last night. I've added some pictures of them. Makayla was so excited because she was able to finally show us her dances she's been working on. She did great and looked so cute. Alexis sang in the choir and then had a special quartet that she performed in. She did great, although she didn't smile a whole lot while she was singing. I think she was just nervous. Next Tuesday Merrit, Makayla and Chelsea will be performing for their grade levels. Merrit and Makayla both have speaking parts in a little skit for that night. Makayla is Rudolph and she has been asked to wear brown clothes as her costume. It reminded me of the skit I did when I was little and Mom went out of her way to dye me some clothes so I could have brown clothes to be a reindeer and then everyone else wore black clothes. I love you for that Mom. You are do good at going the extra mile. Thanks!

My finals start next week. I've been trying to study for them, but every time I try to read the chapters I'm suppose to know I fall asleep. I'm pretty frustrated with myself. I can't wait to be finished with my classes for a few weeks. I need the break. I haven't signed up for next semester yet. I hope to do that today.

This is Makayla's tap outfit. This is Lexi singing in the quartet.

This is Makayla dancing her ballet. This is her in her ballet outfit.

One of the moms bought flowers for all the dancers because her daughter was one of them. I thought it was really nice of her. And Makayla loved getting the flower. I would've had more pictures of her actually dancing and Lexi singing in the choir, but I forgot that I had a nighttime setting on the camera until the very end of Makayla's ballet. The pictures I tried to take before that were too black to see anything. I was so mad at myself for not remembering sooner. But Charlie was able to video record all their performance. I just can't post those here.

Christmas Memories

I liked Heather's idea so much, I thought it would be fun to do something similar with our Christmas memories. What are some of your favorite Christmas memories? I have many, so I'll just pick one for now and maybe post more later.

Here is our tree. It's only 3 or 4 feet high. I'm hoping to get a big one next year, we'll see!

Do you remember those felt ornaments we all had? I now have mine on our tree here (mine was the red toy soldier) and Addie likes to pull it off and stick it back on over and over again. It no longer even hangs, the string is gone, so it just sits on the branches. I believe Kurt had a green mouse, but I can't remember what everyone else had. I remember we would play with them in the tree. They would sometimes have their own branches to "live" on and we would have them hop around to visit the other ornaments and act out long, drawn-out stories about their lives. I loved doing that. Where did those ornaments come from? Mom, did you make them?

Here is my little soldier dude.