Month: December 2007

Another year . . . Another wonderful Christmas. Bryan and I love surprises, so we decided to tell only my dad (as he was our ride from the Fresno Airport) that we were coming for Christmas! Imagine the looks on everyone’s faces when they saw us. I think the best surprise was my aunt Leslie. We visited her at her office and when she saw me she threw her hands over her mouth and rocked backwards in her chair and for a moment I thought she was going to fall out of her chair; luckily she didn’t. My sister was super surprised also because the week previous I told her I had mailed her something and it was supposed to be there on Thursday. Luckily she had to go home that day for lunch and we were totally able to surprise her. Bryan got a great picture of her surprised face and I added it below. We weren’t able to see my grandparents surprised faces because my grandma caught Bryan walking to the door. However we did hear her joyous exclamation, “Oh my Gosh! Bryan’s here!” It was so nice to see their happy faces when they answered the door.

We had the most amazing time while we were in California. However, my mom and I had planned on making tons of Christmas cookies for everyone and I managed to not make a single cookie. We were able to visit with family and friends and celebrate the true meaning of Christmas. Thank you to everyone who truly made it a Christmas to remember.

 Surprise! Needless to say she didn’t want to go back to work after lunch.

Mariah playing in the leaves . . . right after Uncle Robert had raked them. 
                      Sorry Robert, I just couldn’t pass up this cute picture!

 Grandpa helping the Great grandkids blow out the candle for
                                  Jesus’ Birthday cake . . . someone put some pants on that kid!

On Saturday morning Bryan and I woke up to about an inch of snow. What an amazing and peaceful sight it was. We decided there was no better time to get a Christmas tree and made our way to a self cut lot. We had agreed on getting a tree upwards of 12 feet but once we were out in the lot standing next to the trees, we had no way of telling how tall they actually were. After we finally found one and nearly froze we prayed the tree would stay on top of the car during the journey home. Thankfully everything made it home in one piece, but when we went to put the tree in the stand we totally busted the legs off the stand. Turns out the “sturdy” metal stand we thought we had was only good for trees up to 7 feet. After a trip to several stores we finally found a stand to hold 12 foot trees.

If I counted correctly, we put about 900 lights on the tree. Funny thing is we only have 750 lights on the outside of the house. Growing up my dad used to put about 1,000 lights on our Christmas tree, I must have inherited his love of lights.

During the day all the snow from the previous night had melted, but at 2:00 it started to snow again. Luckily Bryan and I had finished putting the lights on the house 2 minutes before the snow started falling.  Around 7:00 that night we measured and it had snowed 3 inches. I was told it never snowed in Western Washington so I was quite surprised at the 3 inches. It ended up being the perfect day to put up the Christmas decorations.