Family Christmas Countdown

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Happy New Years

We haven't posted in a while...

Since Christmas, I had a few days off, but I did go back to work some as well. I've also been busy finishing up an extra project I've been doing at home. I was less than enthused when I found out that their deadline was hinging right around the Christmas/New Year holiday. Anyway, now that is over, and I'm enjoying a quiet uneventful day at home. It's nice to just relax and do very little. It's 3:25, and I just got out of my pajamas. I haven't been this lazy in a VERY long time.

Here's a little rewind of our holiday events.

For Christmas Laura's Mom, Cherie, came to visit us here. It was a great time! We went to the Arboretum and saw all their Christmas decorations. They had a huge mansion there that was filled with Christmas trees lavishly decorated, puppets and other figurines from fairy tales, a whole huge room filled with Charles Dickens figurines depicting the Christmas story... it was really fun. Alli saw Rudolph the red nosed raindeer, and frosty the snowman that day.

Alli has been very attentive to the advent calendar we have this year, and every day we would do the countdown to how many more days until Christmas. We had even explained what Christmas Eve was in advance, so she would be ready. So, on Christmas Eve morning, we asked her, "what day is today?" She got very excited with a sparkle in her eye that said, "Oh, I know this one!" and then exclaimed proudly, "I know! It's the 3rd of the Night!" We still don't know what the 3rd of the night is, but we sure got a good kick out of her answer :)

On Christmas Eve, we went to see Santa. Santa asked her what she wanted for Christmas. She said, "a pink toy pony". Then Santa said , "what else do you want?" Alli had only requested a pony all season long, so my ears perked up when she said she also wanted a toy train. Then I turned to Santa who asked AGAIN, "what else do you want?" I was thinking... he'd better not keep this up... when my adorable little daughter said, "that's all, I don't need anything else." I was so proud of her, and a little miffed at the Santa for continuing to prod our little daughter with "what else do you want?"

We also got to see a HUGE toy train exhibit that day, just before we saw Santa. There were hundreds of toy trains, whizzing around cool diorama scenes of mt. rushmore, out west, New York, Dallas, The White House and other national monuments, including a huge statue of liberty. There was a huge section that had the golden gate bridge and a version of San Francisco.
It was the coolest toy train exhibit I'd ever seen!

For Christmas Eve, we had our tradition of eating a Russian meal. I made Borsch (a very yummy beet/vegetable stew), and Blini (crepes).

Christmas day we shared a pinata with some friends, opened presents, and had another yummy meal, this time, Laura's creation. We had duck with an orange glaze and a tart apple stuffing. It was delicious!

We Love you all very much, and have been glad to have this blog to get to know all of you closer this season! Hope you all have a very happy New Years!

-Jed