Christmas Meme

What the heck is a Meme? I didn't know but I looked it up. Am I the only one who didn't know? Anyway, my sweet, little pajama friend the Happy Zombie posted this on her blog and I figured I'd put it on mine too, since she was so interested...tee hee :)

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? Neither. My warm drink of choice is Hazelnut Flavored coffee with Hazelnut Creamer in it. And I don't really like it after morning. I don't even like Hot Chocolate by a campfire..how wierd is that?!

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? He just puts them under the tree. No wrapping. That's how we know they're from him. He does label them with names, and usually sorts them by the girls' special spots on the couches. He puts small things in their stockings, but so do the mom and dad. :)

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? Whiteicicles on the house, colored in the big Christmas Tree in front and colored on my tree inside, IF I can find a tree to fit into this tiny house. The girls have little trees for their rooms and they have colored lights too. I would love to put lights on the entire roof, but Travis won't let me...he's mean! tee hee :)

4. Do you hang mistletoe? Um, no. We kiss enough around here! I don't want to give anyone the wrong idea!

5. When do you put your decorations up? Sometime after Thanksgiving. In this town EVERYONE puts up lights the day after Halloween. I feel sorry for poor little Thanksgiving. It's like the forgotten holiday. I even tried to find Thanksgiving decorations, and couldn't. Ok, back to Christmas decorating, I got the outside lights up. The boxes of decorations are in the basement waiting for my birthday. We have always gotten our tree on my Bday. THEN I pull the boxes out and really decorate inside.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)? Ham. I used to be a Honeyroast Ham snob, but the spiral hams they have at Costco are really good too. Unfortunately, we don't have a Costco anywhere around us, so I'll have to find something else this year.

7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child? For those of you who know me, you know I can't remember yesterday much less stuff from a long time ago! One time my dad brought snow from the mountains for my Bday, does that count?

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? What's that supposed to mean? Is there something I don't know about him? He's a jolly old elf with twinkly eyes and rosy red cheeks. He flies around in a sleigh with magical reindeer and leaves presents for all the good girls and boys! Now, I did find out the Easter Bunny is my mom. I peeked through the bathroom window and could see through the family room window and saw her putting our baskets together. I think I was about 9 or 10.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Oh heck yes we open a present on Christmas Eve. I usually pick which ones the girls get to open so they don't open the best one and forget about the rest!

10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree? I have lots of ornaments that I just like. No special theme. The girls get an ornament every year, so when they move out they will each get to take their own. I guess I'll have to buy some new ones then, but for now, it's just got a little bit of everything.

11. Snow! Love it or Dread it? That's a stupid question. Other than the squirrels, that's the thing I'm looking forward to about living in this place! BRING ON THE SNOW!!!!

12. Can you ice skate? Yea, I CAN, but I don't like to fall on the ice and have a wet butt for the rest of the session, so I DON'T.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift? Fabric Depot $100 gift certificates.

14. What’s the most important thing about the Holidays for you? Family and the celebration of Jesus. I do love the food and relaxing too!

15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert? Christmas Sugar Cookies!

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? Sleeping in late if the kids don't get up early. Staying in my jammies all day and eating lots of food and then cleaning up all the dishes and, WAIT, that's not part of my favorite things to do. After I clean up then vegging in front of the tv, going to bed early then sleeping in the next day too. :)

17. What tops your tree?An angel holding little lights.

18. Which do you prefer giving or Receiving? Giving, definitely.

19. What is your favorite Christmas Song? I don't really have a favorite song, I like most Christmas music.

20. Candy Canes! Yuck or Yum? I like the Cinnamon flavored ones. I buy the prettiest colored for the tree. Usually, one or two get eaten, but the rest get thrown away by summertime!

Sara's quilt

Ok, I finally finished Sara's quilt. I wasn't sure I'd like it, but now that it's done, I'm happy with it. I was not so sure about the colors that she picked out but I think they really work together, now that they're all in a whole quilt. :) She's going for the tropical/beachy theme in her room. She has some accessories, but her room isn't quite finished. Maybe Santa will bring some cool stuff for her to decorate with. :) Now to work on some other unfinished projects!

Well, it's the day after Thanksgiving, and since there is NO shopping in Sturgeon Bay, we got the Christmas lights up. This is the first time we've had a really great Christmas Tree in the front yard. It's so big, tho, so it was a little bit hard getting it ALL lit up, but I think it looks ok. Now to find a place for a tree in the house!

Christmas by the Bay

So, we went to the Christmas parade the day after the tree lighting. Anisa said it was probably going to be boring (the last parade we went to lasted all of about 5 minutes and WAS boring, but this was really nice. EVERYONE was there.

Of course, the police and fire dept. started the whole thing out.






Then the Sturgeon Bay High School Band rocked the house, er, um, well, the neighborhood. :)

Here's our little piccolo player....isn't she cute??!! The band here really is good. The drummers especially like their job.

There were all sorts of floats and cars, scooters and even CAMELS!! This camel is actually a baby. Isn't she adorable?? And so calm. She just walked by without a care in the world. She's very fuzzy for the winter too.

This combo made us laugh, because....ONLY IN WISCONSIN does a beer (well, if you want to call Budweiser "BEER") truck follow a church float in the Christmas parade!

And ending the whole procession is Santa in a One Horse Open Sleigh. It was a fun morning. Luckily, it was good weather, too. Cold, but no rain or snow, although snow would have been COOL!!! :)

Christmas by the Bay

Well, I'm not one to do ANYTHING about Christmas decorating til AFTER Thanksgiving ~Poor Thanksgiving, it's like a forgotten holiday. Ok, back to the post....Sturgeon Bay, for a little town, likes to dress up for Christmas nice and early.

We went to the Christmas Tree Lighting the other night. Here's the tree waiting to be lit up...












And here it is lit up. :)

It Stuck!

Well, here's what our front yard looked like a couple hours after the "flurries" decided to hang around. It actually started sticking and it's all white now. I love that!!!! I just hope it melts tonight since I have to drive to Green Bay tomorrow to pick up TJ from the airport. I don't want to be driving with all the WI people tailgating me in the snow and slush! But it is nice to look at. Ah, winter. It's my season!!! :)

It's snowing!!

Ok, Ok, it's actually flurrying, but it's still exciting. I'm so looking forward to winter. I am not saying I won't be sick of it by May, but I'm looking forward to it right now. :) I love watching the snow. Here's a picture of the snow, it's not a great pic, but you can get an idea of what we get to look at.

Quilts, finally DONE!

Well, I actually finished!

I started the Clipper quilt (Anisa's high school is the Sturgeon Bay Clippers) when we were going to the football games and needed to stay warm. Well, football season is over, but we have a warm toasty quilt to keep us warm (since we don't have ENOUGH in the house already!). The red/white blocks are split nine-patches and were very fun to make since they went together pretty quickly. The Clippers on the bottom are just pieced ships that I found in one of my books.

This little star quilt came from a pattern I found in one of my boxes. I cut it out of a magazine ages ago and found it again, and thought, "Wow, that's cute. I should make that". So, I did. The Tiny star blocks are 1.5" finished and the little red/yellow 4 patches between the stars are only 1/4". Lucky for me, the pattern shows you to make them bigger, then cut them down so you're not working with a bunch of tinsey little pieces. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. It won't be keeping anyone warm, except the dust bunnies it's covering on the table. :)

Well, I sent my oldest baby off to the Big City! New York here she comes! She went on a mission trip with the Sturgeon Bay Moravian church. The Moravians are pretty much like Lutherans. It's not our church, but they have a really good youth group and there are quite a few of Anisa's friends who go there.

They boarded the bus at noon Wed. and drove all night to get to NY first thing in the a.m. Thurs. It's the first time I've ever let my baby go on a trip like this but we're excited for her.

The plan is they will work (there are 6 groups of one adult and 4 kids each) throughout the city ~Stanton Island, Manhattan and Brooklyn for 2 days, Sat. will be sightseeing ~one of the places they are definitely going is Ground Zero. Sunday, they'll worship with a Carribean congregation ~loud, hand clapping, feet stompin' Praisin' the Lord!! Then they'll pack lunches, board the bus, drive all night to make it home EARLY Monday morning so they can go to school. She's going to be a tired pup, but will have some awesome new memories for the rest of her life.

This is a picture of Anisa and Amm, one of her dear buds here. Amm is an exchange student from Thailand. Anisa is learning some Thai words and Amm gets to practice her english. Aren't they just the cutest??!!!

A New fuzzy friend

You've probably seen enough, but too bad.....we had another fuzzy friend in our yard. It's a bunbun! I threw out some bread crumbs for the birds and this little guy showed up. He's FAT! It's like a zoo in my backyard...I love it. There are several birds out there. I'm hoping to get a good picture of one of the cardinals, but they're kind of shy.