Merry Christmas! 2009

Christmas Eve we spent with my cousin and her family in Sultan-which is only 30 minutes away. She is my 2nd cousin, but she is close to our age. It's so nice to live close to family! Her parents live near Las Vegas, NV and her siblings are scattered. She is the only one who lives in Washington and I am the closest family she has. We spent Christmas Eve with her and had a really yummy dinner there. Lobster Spagetti-YUMMMMM!! The little cousins (my kids and her kids) exhanged gifts and opened them. We read the Christmas Story out of the Bible (in Luke) and then we went home to settle OUR boys into bed. Mason went willingly, Mac...not so much-because he's a teenager you know (14 going on 21 or something like that).


CHRISTMAS EVE: Mason putting out Milk and Cookies in Santa Cup and plate we have for Santa. He also wrote a letter to Santa (that he wrote himself with some help from me). He set out the letter and Santa wrote him back! Mason went to bed oh so willingly....because you know, Santa won't come until all the children are asleep-and that includes teenagers. Mason was freaking out and was affraid that MAC wasn't going to go to sleep.

We have a glass ornament that looks like a pickle. It's a German tradition that the first person who finds the pickle ornament that is hidden in the tree gets a special gift. "Our" tradition....the first person to find the pickle hidden in the tree gets to open the first present. Last year, I hid it high in the tree, not thinking Mason couldn't find it (stupid me). This year, I hid it low so Mason had a fair chance. The pickle ornament is the EXACT same color as our lovely fake tree. So it's a little hard to find. Mason started looking high like last year, hence the reason why he climbed the window to find it.

Then I told them it was "low", then I was saying "hot and cold". After about 5 minutes of searching, Lee lost his patience and told the boys to move out of the way and he would find it. He found it after 1-2 minutes. So The Dad got to open the first present and Mason got to help hand out presents (because he got really mad when Dad found the pickle).

The boys smiling nice for me....I told them if they didn't smile nice for me that we would finish opening the presents after lunch. So they smiled nice.

All of Mason's "hopes and dreams" were inside of this box.

The toy train that he asked Santa for in his letter.....and it helped that he carried the Bed, Bath and Beyond catalog since the day after Thanksgiving telling everyone that he wanted THIS train.

Hmmmm....I wonder what's in this box?

Yep, his first rifle. He was totally shocked and suprised. He didn't ask for it, but Lee felt he was ready for his own. Mac was over the moon, and he still is.

And this last pic, just because I thought he looked cute. We hope you all had a Merry Christmas!

Keeping our Tradition

Christmas 2002, we spent Christmas in Yakima. It was Mason's first real Christmas (he had just turned 1) and we hadn't been to Yakima for Christmas since Mac was born. On our way home from Yakima, Lee decided it would be cool to drive through Leavenworth and take Stevens Pass. Cool it was. Leavenworth is a little Barvarian themed village near Wenatchee. It has been named one of America's best Christmas destinations on Good Morning America (last year) and is on another Christmas Town countdown on another show on a cable network (I just can't think of it right now). At Christmas time, the whole town is decked out in lights (I couldn't get the coolness on my camera-I guess I need a fancier one). In 2002, we walked around, we went through some of the shops, we ate some German dinner, and we went home. On our way home, Lee and I thought it would be neat to go there next year, stay the night, etc. So we did. And it's something we have been doing around Christmastime since. We have missed a year here and there (last year we didn't go, because we just moved). We did go there for Christmas, but it was a huge pain in the you know what, getting presents there. And that year we went for Christmas Day, I got sick, Mason was in the hospital for a few days because he was sick-so being sick sucked all of the fun out of it. When you do something like that, you have to make reservations in August or September before Christmas and I made them in August.

While we are there, we go up Icicle Ridge (I think that's what it's called) and go sledding down this huge hill, that's usually a road when it's not snowy. When we got there, it had just snowed 7 inches the night before.

Mac got plowed into the snow by his Dad, that is why Lee was laughing in the picture above. Mason made it all the way down the hill on his little blow-up sled thing. He's 40-nothing pounds, so he sailed down nicely.

We went into town after drying off at the hotel room. There is a hill right in town where everyone goes sledding. Lee towed Mason in town on that little blow-up snow thing he has. Everyone thought it was cool, and asking Mason for rides. Mac is carrying a tube.

The guys in town Sunday morning. I got Lee 1 1/2 pounds of Fudge at a Fudge place. They had so many different kinds, so I got him 1 1/2 pounds of different flavors. Mason got this little wood snake thing from the Wood Store. They had all of these cool wood puzzles the shape of things. He had $20.00 to spend from his Birthday money from Papa & Nana Dawson-and this is what he ended up with. I tried talking him into something cooler, but he had his mind made up.

Mason saw this huge bear in front of a store, and HAD to have his picture taken with it. And the snake too. He said goodbye to the bear when we left.

After I took pictures of the guys, Mason w/the bear- Lee said the snowy Bronco Truck was feeling left out. It snowed another 5 inches or so the night we stayed in Leavenworth. Stevens Pass was compact snow, and it was snowy when we got there each way. I'm grateful we have this huge SUV of a truck to get us to our Christmas Tradition.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

It snowed ALOT! This is our front sidewalk and porch. I showed Mac "how to" shovel snow. He thought it would be okay if he just skimmed the surface. I then showed him, and shoveled circles around him. He got the point.

I baked, ALOT! This is just a small sample of what I did. I got behind in the baking because I was busy bundling up a certain 7 year old boy up in snow clothes. And then him and his brother would come in wanting cocoa. And then I would hang up thier coats and snow pants, and mop up the melted snow off the floor. It was never ending. So on the night of the 23rd...I baked, all night long. I was done at 4:00am-but Lee wakes up at 5:00am, so I stayed up and made him his lunch, got a few plates of cookies for him to give and went to bed at 6:00am. I slept for 3-4 hours and woke up to hand treats out to friends. There was alot of snow out still, and my Mini-Van didn't get the memo that it's supposed to "pretend" it's an SUV and should behave accordingly. I almost got stuck 2 times.

I took this pic this morning-it snowed on Christmas Morning while we were opening presents. It really came down, and was a cool sight to see from our window.

We wrapped presents in Tinkerbelle Christmas wrapping paper for the boys. This was an idea that I had, and that Lee wanted to do. We didn't get the "freak out" reaction from them that we thought we would. I guess the paper needed to be pink to get the full effect. We are the meanest parents in the world. Lee and I wrap presents on Christmas Eve. This started when Mac was a 1 year old. We start when the boys are in a "coma" to be sure they hear nothing-that is usually around midnight. Lee is usually half asleep and I am tired and cranky. One year, Lee stepped on the scissors-and they broke. They were the only ones we had in the house. He was demoted to "tape boy" and wasn't allowed to leave the couch. This year, like last year, Lee told me that we needed to stop wrapping presents on Christmas Eve. He has been saying this for several years. We do this earlier sometimes..like the year we went to Leavenworth for Christmas.

Mason woke up at 7:00am-which was too early for us (I went to bed at 2:00am). This was the first time he woke up yelling "It's Christmas! Santa came! He came and left stockings stuffed of stuff for us! You have to wake up now! It's Christmas! Come on! Your killing me here!" Yes, he really said all of this in a 2 minute period. This went on until 7:30am. I prefer it when he used to just say "It's Christmas. Wake up." and then proceed to slap our faces a little (not to hard) to wake us up.

Santa leaves our Christmas Stockings on the couch. We haven't had a mantel to hang our stockings out, ever. We have little mantel shelves, but it's not the same. We hang them on stocking hangers on the mantel shelves, Santa fills our stockings with stuff, and leaves them on the couch. He has always done this for us. They are pretty heavy when he's done.

We opened gifts.

Yes, the teenager is going to kill me for this one. But really, I don't care.

We made Mason read the tags. This was the educational part of his Christmas. It was torture. But he survived.

We ate breakfast. I made these Christmas Braid Bread loaves for the first time ever. I made the dough and filling last night, and rolled out and baked this morning. They were so yummy! I made an Apple Filling like for a pie, and I glazed them-this is before the glaze. We also had an egg breakfast casserole, also a first for me. It was all yummy.

And then.....some of us fell asleep. We are grateful for so much this year. We hope all of you have a Merry Christmas!