Christmas 2009

I was happy to have a white christmas this year! There's something nice about moving in and then having snow on christmas. Actually I think it reminded me and Luke of when we first moved to Colorado. We had just graduated at BYU-I in December of 2007 and then drove our two cars out to Colorado shortly after. But we hit a wind storm going through Wyoming and were stuck for a day, but luckily we made it into Denver the night before Christmas Eve. And when we woke up Christmas morning there was snow everywhere, a fairly big storm had come through and we were just so grateful that we had made it into Colorado before the storm did. And we just had a small apartment with no furniture or tree or internet or TV but its one of my best Christmas memories! And so being in a new home this Christmas and getting snow, even though the snow came the night before Christmas Eve this year, it still felt very familiar.

And now we have a driveway to shovel! I think Luke enjoys shoveling, at least he'll do it several times to keep up with it. And so Jacob and I would go outside too and watch him, and Jacob loved sitting out in the snow and watching dad shovel!

diligently watching his dad

me and my happy baby :)

outside again on Christmas Eve and all the snow we got

tasting the snow

laughing at his dad shoveling again :)

my table centerpieces

my chocolate pudding pie

My favorite christmas tradition growing up has been that on Christmas Eve we would have rice pudding. And the Danish tradition is to drop an almond into the pudding and then dish it up for everyone, and whoever finds the almond in their pudding is the winner. And the winner in our family would usually get a chocolate almond candy bar. It's just a lot of fun! But only having two of us that would eat it, and Luke is not even so sure he likes it, I didn't feel like making it this year. So my "substition" was chocolate pudding... but it somehow turned out hard and discusting. So I just wanted to say I'm never doing that again, and maybe I'll stick to my traditions from now on!

ready for christmas eve dinner!

showing Jacob his stocking

staying up late on Christmas Eve

his PJ's say- My 1st Christmas

our tiny nativity set

our tree was basically dead by Christmas, but it looked prettier at night

and basically all these presents were for Jacob!

opening his presents Christmas afternoon

(he slept in really long Christmas morning!)

all he really cared about was climbing on top of the presents to look at the ornaments :)

Once we got all Jacob's new toys set up though he loved them! This one in the picture above is probably my favorite because he can stand at it and it plays like a million songs and keeps him pretty occupied, at least for awhile. But I have to give the credit to Luke's parents, they were great in helping us get some gifts for Jacob this year. Luke did get a new cell phone as a combined birthday and christmas gift- that was all he wanted! And I got some stuff for the house, and I'm promising myself that I'm going to get new glasses- I've had the same ones since high school!

Anyway, we didn't really care about gifts this year, we just felt so blessed to be in a new home, and with a beautiful baby, and with each other. Luke had two weeks off for the break and so we were happy to just spend time together and we had a great Christmas!

Luke's Birthday and lots of Cookies!

Happy Birthday Luke! He turned 27 this year. For some reason, all the sudden 27 sounds reallyyy old. But it was kind of a low key birthday this year, all Luke wanted was a new phone, so he picked out the new Sprint palm pixi. He loves it! And then a few days later we went out to Outback to celebrate.
Right after Luke's birthday he went on his two week Christmas break. So since we weren't going anywhere this year for Christmas and didn't have any real plans Luke decided that to fill our time we could make lots of cookies!
I made these snowflake cookies a few weeks earlier on a "snow day" and brought them to a ward christmas party. I had fun decorating them though because I wanted to make each one different!

The rest of these cookies were all made in two days and then we delievered them to some friends.

ginger cookies- Luke calls them molasses cookies

Andes mint cookies- we melted andes mints on top and swirled them around. The mint made them taste just like the Girl Scout cookies Thin Mints!

Luke and my favorite- oreo cookies! Luke made these especially for some friends that have liked these before. They weren't really Christmasy though so we just colored the icing!

Here were our peanut butter cup cookies- our twist of the Hershey Kiss cookies

All the cookies ready to be divided out- but this isn't even including the little sprinkled sugar cookies we made last! We had soo many cookies!

All ready to go! We had so much fun making these together and then taking them to our old friends! I think we just wanted an excuse to see our friends from the old ward, but it was fun to do something nice for all of them right before Christmas :)

Christmas pictures

Here is our official Christmas 2009 family picture. I wanted to get them done a little more professionally but we kind of ran out of time so we just took it at home. And this year I really wanted to try making some Christmas cards, so that took quite some time since I made each one different. They're not the greatest, but it gave me a little something to work on and I at least enjoyed making them. Here's some of the cards I made for family and a few friends.

But this is Jacob's first Christmas so here are all my attempts to get some cute christmas pictures of him.

Thanksgiving break

Thanksgiving was a nice relaxing week for us. Luke had been out of town on business trips the two business weeks before and so it was nice for him to then have a week off. The best part though was the Friday before Thanksgiving, soon after Luke got home from Omaha, he found out that he passed his fourth and final CPA exam! We were soo excited! Luke has been working on these tests for a year and a half and we are both happy they're over. Luke has promised that our lives will change as soon as these tests were over- and so far, he's actually been right! We've had a lot more time to do things together and he hasn't had to stay late at work, and so it's been nice having him around more- especially for the holidays!

So we didn't do anything special for Thanksgiving, we really didn't do much all week but just relax at home! But we did have a nice Thanksgiving dinner in our new house with just the 3 of us, and that was all we wanted. Thanksgiving day was gorgeous outside too so we played a little in the backyard during the day, and had our dinner later at night.

playing in the backyard

Jacob crawling around the kitchen while we worked on dinner

clapping for the camera

pumpkin pie cooling in the window :)

our thanksgiving dinner!

we had a ham roast instead of turkey- doesn't it like it's straight out of Green Eggs and Ham?!

we did have turkey- turkey thighs, I felt like a caveman eating them though

Jacob trying some homemade rolls

Catching Up!

So for the record I haven't just been a lazy blogger lately- my computer crashed around New Years (great way to start the year...) and so I wasn't able to update, especially since I couldn't access any of my pictures. But the good news is, after a month of being without my laptop- I was finally able to find someone locally who was able to replace my hard drive for a good price. So I did lose some of my stuff again, but not too much- thank goodness for picasa web albums! Maybe this time I'll learn to actually back up all my stuff! But at least my laptop is like new again.

So it's been driving my crazy because even though I'm not very good at blogging too often I hate feeling way behind- then it's no fun anymore! But I want to get caught up with all the holidays, and my trip to maryland and everything we've been up to lately- so here goes!