Happy Holidays!!!

Now, don't get all upset because I didn't start with 'Merry Christmas'. I realize that the main event for December is and should be Christmas. However, since I (and almost everyone else that I know) have celebrated at least 2 major holidays since I last posted I thought it best to start with a happy holiday.





As you can see, it's been quite a while. Almost every day the past few weeks I've thought 'gee, I really should blog today...' but that inevitably fell by the wayside, along with things like cleaning, excercising, and other normal non-holiday activities. Instead I found myself shopping for and wrapping presents, cooking holiday meals, making treats and/or snacks, visiting with friends in the area, or sleeping. It didn't help that Joe's been out of school since the 13th of December and been doing quite a bit of 'work from home' that starts out as school-related things and turns into surfing the internet or playing games... But enough excuses.





Christmas here was really good. It was strange to be 'home for the holidays' without actually going to either of our parents' places, but it was a lot of fun too. We got to kind of do our own traditions (which strangely ended up being most of both of our traditions; we may need to cut back next time...) and we didn't have anywhere that we just had to be for this family or that. We had Haitian food for dinner on Christmas Eve, which was yummy, accompanied by 'Compa Noel' Joe's Haitian Christmas music, which is fun...even though I don't understand most of the words. We read the story from Luke 2, had Wassail (yum) and opened one present from under the tree. Karen's first gift was a teddy bear (thanks uncle Mike), Joe got a BYU t-shirt (Calista) and I got the movie "Young Frankenstien", (Stacia) (which we ended up taking back to Walmart-shhh!). Since we didn't have that many things under our tree, we decided that Santa was going to bring wrapped gifts for Karen (and us) to open and it was really easy to put them out on Christmas Eve, since we'd finished the wrapping a couple days in advance.





The only unwrapped present on Christmas morning was Karen's "Bounce-n-go Inch Worm" It's really cute and green with a yellow saddle. The only problem is that her legs are a bit short so she scoots around on her tippy toes for right now. She got lots of other presents including some wooden puzzles, Mr. Potato Head (the original), and a 'doodle pro', but the worm is her favorite of all. Joe and I got mostly movies; we realized that for Christmas we got more than half of the year's top 10 moives (including Bourne, Rattatouille (?), Shrek, Harry Potter, and another one I can't remember right now).

For dinner on Christmas I (okay we, Joe did at least half of it) made ham, turkey (just a bit that had been frozen since Thanksgiving), potatoes, gravy, homemade mac and cheese, sweet potatoes, stuffing, rolls, pies, veggies and dip, and probably something else that I can't remember right now. We've been eating on all of this food for a week or more now. Even though I just made a little bit of everything it all together took over our fridge. We really couldn't find any room for anything else after the dinner was all put away.

The days between Christmas and New Year's are all a blur. They usually are, but this time it's because we spent most of that time sick. Karen has been bringing home a new cold every week since she started nursery a month ago (except this week!) and the one from the 23rd was especially nasty. It was so bad the couple days after Christmas that I had to break my usual no-drugs-when-pregnant rule and take some decongestants. That didn't work so well since I had to go to my regular doctor appointment on the 27th and my blood pressure was through the roof (up 30 points in 2 weeks...but that's a different story), but by Sunday we were all feeling pretty much better.

For New Year's eve we had lots of treats-mostly left over from Christmas (at least the sweet parts) since we had tons and being sick we didn't feel much like eating anything. We got some salty things to go with our leftover chocolate (crackers, chips, etc). Our friends Doren and Steve Cook came over and watched Harry Potter 5 and Transformers with us, and Justin and Kitara Beasley came in just after midnight (their plane was supposed to get in at 10 pm from Oregon, but it was an hour and a half late). My usual family tradition of doing a puzzle for New Year's was somewhat thwarted by the fact that the puzzle I got this year was from the dollar store. Not only was the picture on the front of the box not a good representation of the puzzle itself, but putting all the edge pieces together (at least the ones that looked like they actually went with the puzzle) did not make any square or rectangle; it was kind of a rhombus shape: having 4 sides but of different lengths and angles not quite 90 degrees... needless to say, the $1 puzzle is now in the dumpster. We got another puzzle yesterday at the mall (American Revolution, 1000 pieces) but it's too big to fit on the piano bench. Once we get all the leftover treats off the table (either in our bellies or in the trash) we'll try doing it on the table.

That's basically how our holiday season has played out. Now the real countdown has begun: baby Rachel is coming in 38 days, give or take, and that's what we'll be working on for the next month or so. I hope to put up a bunch of Christmas pictures soon; for now here is Karen riding her worm outside for the first time. Note the light jacket and capri's; it was 60 degrees on Christmas!