Very Merry Marathon.

And no, I certainly don't mean the running kind, though I'm sure you knew that already since I'm not exactly the running type. Christmas was quite the marathon this year but it was SO much fun! The celebrations started on Thursday (the 22nd) when Mom took Tara and I to get manicures and then we met up with Grammi and Apanda for tea at the Queen Mary tea room. What a great place!


We each had a different kind of tea in our own teapot and then shared towers of treats!! We had mini quiches and cookies and cakes and fruit and finger sandwiches and it was absolutely delightful.

Steven was at work that day but we decided to open a couple of gifts when he got home that evening. It was sort of our "Christmas Eve" since we were planning to do our Christmas with just the two of us the following morning so we figured it would be okay if we opened a couple of gifts early. We each gave each other one and then together we opened a present from Steven's aunt and uncle and another from our dear friend Hilde.

Steven and I were so excited to give each other the presents we'd purchased that we could hardly sleep!

Here we are Christmas morning!! Haha! We had started waking up around 5am -- like little kids who can't wait a moment longer to open presents! We managed to stay in bed until 7:30 and then we made hot chocolate and started opening the dozen or so gifts we exchanged.

We got each other so many fun things! Books and DVDs and new jackets and cookbooks and a snuggie and cookies and pretty much just everything. Steven bought me a DVD with Mickey's Christmas Carol on it so we cozied up on the couch with all the presents and gift wrap strewn about and watched it together.

Continuing a tradition that we started last year, we went out to breakfast on Christmas Eve morning. It's such a great way to relax and do something special just the two of us before of the family chaos begins. We went to The Kettle in Enumclaw. It's a really popular restaurant that serves HUGE portions. We split a scramble, waffle and muffin and still had enough food left over for a big breakfast on Saturday morning!

We spent the rest of the day celebrating with my mom and sisters.

First the Christmas Eve service at church and then home for a dinner of salmon and wild rice (and rum slush!!) and then since Santa stopped by while we were at church (quite the Christmas miracle) we opened stockings (a new experience for Steven) and loads of gifts!

My mom bought Steven the Band of Brothers series on DVD. I think that might have been the most successful gift given this year. He carried it around all night. I got an ice cream maker and Mom also got us a gift card to The Triple Door, which I think will be a super fun date!

Following the gift opening, Mom and Tara and I piled on the couch to watch the Disney Christmas Sing-a-long. We used to have the old VHS version of it and I bought Mom this DVD -- I mean, Santa put it in Mom's stocking last year. It has some new songs and weird narration in between the normal old songs but we had fun with it anyway. Definitely laughed a lot trying to relearn the Toy Soldier song.

A little time for a few games of Ticket to Ride and then home for a good night's sleep before the craziness of Christmas day.

Christmas morning we were up bright and early and off to Steven's parents house for breakfast and presents. So early in fact that no one else was awake and we set off the alarm, which wouldn't have been that big of a deal if someone had told Steven the new alarm code when they changed it recently :) oops! Merry Christmas everybody! Time to get up!! We enjoyed a pancake breakfast with them and then opened loads more gifts. Including two more sets of movie tickets, a gift card to The Taproot Theatre, a gift card to an Italian restaurant in Tacoma and a new board game called Puerto Rico.

We took a few minutes to watch the Disney/Pixar short Prep and Landing -- Love it!! -- and then we were off to Papa and Grammi's to join the rest of the Parducci/Sodoma family.

They had already started opening gifts but we arrived just in time to see Tara get her periodic table of elements poster -- haha! My sister is such a nerd! I love it!!!!

I like to accessorize.

After gifts had been opened and we had been eating cookies and snacks for hours and hours, it was time to chill out a bit. Tara, Michael and Danny and I played a game of Bang. Steven went with my uncles to try to move a tree stump in Uncle Scott's yard and when they found that it couldn't be moved, ended up going Christmas-light-looking instead :) haha! I guess there was a house with a big Seahawks thing that Uncle Barry wanted to show them. Steven and the girls started learning the new Puerto Rico game and I helped Grammi in the kitchen -- making the gravy and eating turkey.

We ate a huge dinner, sat around for a bit, ate some cake and then started some pretty awesome games of Catch Phrase and Holiday Charades. These games with my family get incredibly noisy but are so so so much fun!! We laughed and yelled and played until 11pm. Steven and I were absolutely exhausted by the time we got home. So exhausted in fact that we didn't even leave the house the following day. We woke up, warmed up our leftovers from Christmas Eve and ate breakfast in bed while watching Despicable Me. It was a much needed lazy day and we pretty much just enjoyed all of our new gifts and the leftover Christmas munchies.

Monday we met up with my dad and his family for dinner at Maggianos and, yes, more gift opening. Phew! And that was the last of our Christmas celebrating. Steven was back at work this morning. It was a really fabulous first Christmas together though and we really just had the best time ever. We were so blessed that Steven had the whole weekend off like that. We know that it's probably not going to happen every year.

p.s. the weather people are predicting snow for tomorrow! Who knows, we might have a white New Years :)

Wrapping things up!

Christmas is quickly closing in on us and there's still plenty to do! At this moment, I am sitting in the corner of the couch with my back turned to Steven as he wraps all of the presents he got me. It's kind of silly but he's just been so busy and he doesn't want to have to take time away from me to do it, so this way we're still together. We're listening to Christmas music and the Christmas lights are on and I'm blogging and he's wrapping and it's just a cozy little moment.

He keeps bringing the gifts over and putting them on the couch after he finishes wrapping them so I can see them. They all have numbers on them. He was really concerned that I chose to take a picture right now because he hasn't finished all of them. This is only four out of the seven. We somehow ended up doing lots of small gifts this year. Should be really fun.

Oh! By the way -- check out his new shirt!! Can you find what's missing? Probably not, but this is his first shirt from the department that doesn't say "recruit" on it and he is super excited about it :) They have new recruits who are just getting started so he is no longer at the bottom of the totem pole! Woohoo!

Things have been pretty crazy around here. Steven worked a ton this past weekend and we hardly saw each other at all. We've both been trying to finish up Christmas shopping and even ended up doing a large portion of the shopping online this year for the first time ever. There just aren't enough hours in the day to go to the mall.

I've been baking, a lot! I've made fudge twice now (second batch in the works pictured above, with my phone counting up the 8 minutes that the sugar and milk are supposed to boil) and I've also made, sugar cookies, cream cheese spritz cookies, spice cookies, snowball cookies, raspberry mazurkas, and of course, the homemade marshmallows.

We're packing up a bunch of them to take to each of the three different shifts at the fire station over the next three days. I got out all of my holiday tins and filled them up! I love sharing food with people.

Rachel's in town!! Woohoo! I love having my friends come home to Seattle. It's just the best. We got together on Monday and enjoyed sushi and coconut tea and a little last minute shopping. It was so lovely visiting with her! I wish we lived close enough to have tea together on a regular basis. Maybe we should each get a kayak... I could bring a thermos full of tea and we could meet each other halfway. I wonder how far is halfway between Honolulu and Seattle...

We had a nice cozy evening at home last night. We watched I'll Be Home For Christmas, and yes, I am referring to the 1998 Jonathon Taylor Thomas film. It's a terrible movie but still so great at the same time. Besides, who doesn't love JTT in a santa suit! Anyhow, we watched the movie and shared a pomegranate. It was actually a really wonderful much needed date night for us. We've recently discovered that peeling and eating a pomegranate together is really fun and sometime around midnight (a little over halfway through the movie) we got up and toasted some English muffins with melted cheese -- most excellent midnight snack!!

Today my sisters came over. We made paninis and ate Christmas cookies and drank tea and played Scotland Yard, Last Night On Earth and Settlers of Catan. And then the girls left and Jeremy came over and we made dinner and played Pandemic, Acquire and Rumikub. All in all, a really fun day with good friends and good games and good food.

Steven is done wrapping gifts so I guess it's time to get some sleep. He has to work tomorrow and I'm meeting up with my mom and sisters for manicures and holiday tea!

Goodnight!!!

Wicked Winds of the West.

Okay, I'll be honest, I have no idea from which direction these winds came but I do indeed know that they were most certainly wicked. We had a pretty wild wind storm last night. They said on the news that we had consistent winds reaching 60 mph with occasional gusts of up to 70 mph!! Shoot! Steven never told me we were moving to the storm capital of Washington! I can't believe the crazy weather we've endured out here!

(A tree across the road blocking my way out of town this morning. I think it's actually stuck on the power-lines it fell on. I went around through Auburn.)

Steven got home from work at about 9:48pm last night and was out the door again by 9:50pm. There had just been a call on his pager that said "downed power lines involving occupied vehicle." Sounds scary to me! He ended up staying out running calls all night long and finally crawled into bed at 2am. He used a chainsaw to slash away at downed trees and all sorts of fun things. We were both wide awake when he came home at 2 and had just fallen asleep right around 4am when there was a call for a house fire. I'm not sure that Steven woke up the first time but he heard it the second and was up and out the door. (By this time our power was out). Unfortunately, because of all of the power-lines and poles and trees and everything across the roads, they couldn't get to the fire. They just had to sit in their trucks and watch everything burn waiting for the roads to be cleared. The lady lost everything -- house, car, pet -- and all that was left standing was her fireplace/chimney. So sad. Steven came home from that one at 5:30 and we slept until he had to run out the door at 8am to get to work. Yuck! Only got about four hours of sleep but at least I didn't have to go to work this morning like he did.

There were so many trees like this! They said that it was even worse because we had all that heavy rain and flooding last weekend so the ground is still totally saturated.

Empty Inside?

So I'm just finishing my second batch of Christmas cards. On Tuesday, I took 39 of them to the post office. This morning I finished making the last 11 of them and am just about to take them to the post office. That's 50... right? Well, somehow, I managed to have one left over to keep for us. So that means that I made 51. But I only had one pack of 25 sheets of red cardstock when I started. Times two cards per sheet equals 50 cards. And I never opened the second pack that I purchased. So how in the world did I end up with 51 cards??? It's not even possible. I checked to see if maybe somehow I actually had 26 sheets of red paper to begin with but that would mean that I would have the other half still left over. No left over other half to be found. So then I recounted all of the checkmarks on my list. 50. And still one left for us. WHAT DID I DO?? I can't figure it out. The only thing I can come up with is that I accidentally sent an empty envelope. Even just the thought of this embarrasses me. I can't imagine how I could have possibly done that, especially because I tried to sign each one specific to who it was being sent, but, I don't know! It's quite the conundrum. So, sigh, if you happen to receive an empty envelope from us, please let me know and I'll send you a card and I'll try not to cry from embarrassment. Off to the post office I go.

Tres Extraordinaire!

I'm watching Eloise at Christmas Time right now and I cannot tell you how much I would love love LOVE to go to New York City during the Christmas season and have a horse and buggy drive me around all day to do all of my Christmas shopping and then return me to the Plaza hotel in the evening. However, I just visited the Plaza website and it costs $900 to book a room for just one night!! And of course I would want the bed and breakfast package so this could get a little pricey. Hmm, I'll have to wait a couple of years for this one me thinks. Come to think of it, for the price of two nights at the plaza we could take a week long cruise... I think we'll stick with that option.

Trimming the Tree.

Well, okay, it's actually been about a week now since we decorated, but I finally had to stop procrastinating on my Christmas cards so now the blog has taken the first place spot on the procrastination list. (which is why all of these most recent posts are actually being posted days after they were started...)

Time to decorate!! We got started with some hot chocolate and marshmallows. I'm not usually much of a marshmallow fan but I do like them on hot chocolate every now and then. We decided to skip the Bailey's this time around since it was still a bit early in the day ;)

I forgot what I was supposed to be decorating for a minute. I think Steven looks nice in the lights though.

We don't really have that many ornaments of our own but we've had a few given to us recently and I raided my mom's garage last week. Basically, I took everything that she didn't put on her tree this year. And since her tree is all old-fashioned and pretty, that means I get all the fun Lucy and Disney stuff! Woohoo!!

And my aunt and uncle sent us that pretty silver heart ornament that says Our First Christmas 2010. I need to put a picture of us inside of it.

There's Snoopy and Dumbo and Lucy and Jeannie and my "Merry Christmas Stephanie" ornament that the Mountfords gave me last year :) And that angel between St. Nick and Lucy was made by me when I was three years old. I was surprised that my mom still had some of those!

Lovely. I think it's pretty darn good for our first one. I like to just sit and look at it sometimes. It's so pretty. I didn't really have a good place for the garland and poinsettia lights but I really wanted to use them so that will have to do for this year. We're having fun wrapping presents and trying to fit them in under the tree... we're quickly running out of room.

The Egg is in the Nog.

One of the sillier lines in Christmas is a Comin' -- from my choir slash caroling days. It says "Christmas is a comin' and the egg is in the nog..." and then I can't remember what else it says because the boys always sing that part and I always sang "oooo" right there.

First thing to report: the snow is gone!

These last couple of weeks have been so busy!!! I'm sorry that I let myself go so long in between posts. I'll try not to let this get too long but there are just so many Christmas activities to tell you about.

Thanksgiving was really lovely. I missed Steven while he was at work but I got to spend lots of time with my family. We played Apples to Apples and ate marvelous food and laughed a lot. It was fun and silly and is always one of my favorite days of the year.

On Black Friday we did NOT go shopping. No, no, no. That's never something that has interested me. We actually had a really relaxing day at home since we knew the rest of the weekend was going to be busy. On Saturday we made our way down to the Seattle Center. During Winterfest at the Center they have all sorts of random holiday activities going on all the time and on this particular evening, I noticed there was going to be singing around a bonfire with Hank Cramer! I know Hank from Winthrop. I worked for his wife, Kit, while I was there and Hank used to come to the dinner rides and sing cowboy songs for our guests. So we went and stood in the freezing cold and sang with Hank, which I really enjoyed :)





My Aunt and cousins were also there for some festive fun that evening, along with my did and his family so we got to spend a little time with them as well. After the singing, we stuck around the Center House for a swing/fox trot dance lesson and then a couple of hours of dancing. We had such a marvelous time!! I wore a twirly skirt and we tried to dance the whole time. Sometimes they played really slow songs though and we didn't really know what to do. We tried to fox trot like everyone else but as I told Steven we were just "walking and holding hands." He said it didn't matter because as long as we were moving together no one would notice. We tried our best and laughed a lot :)

We like to watch all of the other couples who are older and way better dancers than us. It's so cute that they've just been dancing together for years and years. When we were sitting during one of the songs, this older gentleman came over and said (to Steven) "Why are you sitting down? This is the only activity where she has to do exactly what you tell her!" haha! And then, after we had danced a really fun fast song another gentleman came over and told us that we looked really good out there and to keep up the good work!! It made us feel so good that he and his wife were watching us! They were so cute. They had matching red and white saddle shoes and red shirts and he had suspenders and she had a twirly skirt and they were just adorable. It was a late night and we made it an even later one by stopping at the Matador for nachos after dancing. All in all, fabulous day.

On Sunday we spent most of the day with my mom and Tara.

We played with Charlie and watched him burrow in the garland that my mom had laying in the living room (it is now outside hanging from the roof, much to Charlie's dismay). He was being really silly and kept poking his head out. Steven took this nice little photo.

Mom took all of us to see Tangled because she loves us so much. What a wonderful film!!!! Oh my goodness!! Best movie of the year! I seriously liked it even better than How to Train Your Dragon and I liked that one a LOT! It was so funny and the characters were great and the animation was really lovely and the new songs were good and I'm so jealous that Mandy Moore got to be Rapunzel's voice and I want to own a pub called "The Snuggly Duckling" and everyone should see this movie. I'm buying it as soon as it comes out on DVD. Mom also brought Frango cookies to the movie -- surprise!! So tasty. Like a super huge gormet thin mint cookie with crunched up candy canes on top. We were all very happy about that. If you've never tried these, go to Macys right now and buy some. They're expensive but you'll thank me later.

After the movie it was off to Molbaks to find a Christmas tree for Mom's house. Tara insisted that this one smelled better than the other one that we were looking at so of course we had to check it out.

We tried to take some cute photos to potentially use on our Christmas cards but it just wasn't working out. Besides, the red of my jacket totally clashes with the red of the poinsettias. It just wasn't meant to be.

Steven seemed rather impressed that it only took us about five minutes to choose a tree. I think he was secretly dreading the process and was pleasantly surprised at our efficiency.

Having a strong handsome man for a husband really changes this whole tree-putting-up process. Usually it's a long drawn-out thing where my mom and I are laughing hysterically and can't seem to get the tree to stand up straight for anything in the world and have to readjust it fourteen times and then she's still readjusting it a week later. But, Steven was able to just pick it up, put it in the stand, and hold it straight while Mom tightened the screws into place. Quick and effortless. All I had to do was stand back and document the whole thing.

Mom's house looks so great all Christmassy!!! It's cozy and festive and warm and comforting and cheerful and all the good things that Christmas decorations should be. I hope to achieve that in my decorating someday. I don't feel like she even uses all that much stuff but it's just enough and works so perfectly.

The next few days weren't too exciting except that I got to sub a halfday that Wednesday, which was wonderful! I was in Mikey's classroom and I feel totally at home there so that was great. I learned about rain and clouds with the 4th graders and found out that you can measure the size of raindrops by leaving a pan filled with flour out in the rain for a few seconds and then baking it and sifting out all of the flour. The raindrops will have actually baked. Very strange but it looked cool on the movie we watched and I'm enough of a nerd that I found it interesting.

Thursday was very exciting though. The people who organized the dancing at Winterfest (Arthur Murray Dance Studio) were doing a free week of dancing. So Steven and I got two free private dance lessons and one free group lesson. Our first dance lesson was on Thursday afternoon. We decided that we love taking dance lessons together and are hoping this is something we can afford to do on a regular basis later in life. The lesson was only thirty minutes long but we had a lovely time. All of the people there are so nice and it's like a little family. Everyone was introducing us to everyone else. All the students and instructors seem to know each other really well.

After our lesson it was home for paninis and then out to Buckley to get our Christmas tree, which will be an entirely different blog entry so I won't go into detail about that. Then we went back to the dance studio for a group lesson. We learned The Hussle but the basic stuff we learned is so much the same as swing that it was a little boring for us. And we decided that we don't like group lessons as much because we would really rather not switch partners.

AND THEN WE WENT TO SEE HARRY POTTER!! Woohoo!! We felt like we had been waiting for so long! Steven was making fun of me because I kept saying that we were going to be tired after going to such a late movie. He said late movies start at ten and since ours was getting over at 10:30 that did not make it a late movie. I figured if the movie was making us get home after 11pm, it was a late movie. Well worth it though. It went by so quickly and I'm really sad that we have to wait another 8 months to see the next one... sigh... probably for the best though since I'll be sad that there aren't any more movies after that. I definitely went through withdrawal after I finished the 7th book.

Friday (the 3rd) was good because I got to work, a lot. I subbed at Westhill in a 5th grade class, which I loved. The teachers in that room do a wonderful job!! The kids all know their routines and what they're supposed to be doing when and they were so well-behaved and helpful. It felt so good to be working and to feel useful! I got to teach math and writing and help kids to actually learn something. It's such a great feeling. I love it. At some point during the day I found myself humming "sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name, dm, dm, dm, dm, and you're always glad you came..." seriously, it's just so wonderful to go work there! I know a lot of the 5th and 6th graders and they all get so excited to see me and it makes me feel so special and a lot of the teachers know me and stop to say hi and it makes me feel like I'm a part of something. Mmm. So good.

And then I got to babysit in the evening. We watched the Charlie Brown Christmas movie and Kate and I decorated cookies. That girl really likes her sprinkles :) After the kids went to bed, Mom and Tara came over and watched The Polar Express and ate Frangos with me. They went home around 11 and I layed on the couch and almost fell asleep until Tim and Lissy got home at 1am!!! Oh my goodness! It was a really late night. They had gone to the xbox party at the EMP and Good Charlotte was playing and I guess they were just having so much fun that they lost track of time :) I got home at 2am and was so wired at that point that I couldn't fall asleep until 3am and then got up with Steven when he was getting ready for work at 7am. Ouch. Saturday was a tired day, but still super fun. I drove into Seattle and got to hang out with Lena for a little while. We shared holiday cupcakes at Cupcake Royal (eggnog and chocolate rum) and then went back to her house and drank tea and talked and it was really relaxing and fun. We both tend to be rather busy and it was nice to have a little time to catch up with one another.

In other good news, Chelsea was in town on Saturday -- WOOHOO!!! So great to see her! I really want her to move back up here sooner rather than later. It felt so fun and normal hanging out with her that I was just the saddest when I dropped her off and came to the realization that I wouldn't be seeing her again for at least a few months. We did a little Christmas shopping together and shared an eggnog truffle at See's. It was a very good date.

Sunday I did even more Christmas shopping -- mostly at Costco -- and then had family dinner for Uncle Scott's birthday. I love family dinner. Monday I worked on Christmas cards. Tuesday we had our second free dance lesson. Wednesday we had a lovely Seattle date. Himalayan High Energy tea at the TeaCup, SushiLand for dinner and then to see A Christmas Story: The Musical at the 5th Avenue theatre. Kind of a silly show but we laughed quite a bit and it was nice just to have a night out.

Today I FINALLY got to do my recording session from the voice class I took a couple of weeks ago. Eric, the instructor for my class, was back at his home on the East Coast but he called the recording studio at the start of my session and I was able to hear him in my headphones just as if he were actually in the studio. I LOVE recording like this!!! It's so much fun! And it wasn't even that bad hearing my voice played back either. I sounded way better than I do on voicemail and that was a great comfort since that's really the only time I had ever heard myself recorded before. I'm excited to hear the demos and hopefully start getting some work in the new year! Now I just need to come up with a business name...

Aren't you so glad that you've just been updated on every day of my life since Thanksgiving day!! Wow. Sorry. That was really long and detailed. I think the play-by-play was probably a bit unnecessary but we've been doing so much fun stuff and I just wanted to share all of it with you!!

Only-Ever-First-Ever.

I know, I have lots of blogging to catch up on but I'm only making time for a tree entry right now. I'll admit, I've been looking forward to this Christmas tree for quite a while now. In fact, I started measuring to make sure we had enough room for it sometime last June... no joke. So, in my excitement, I rearranged all of the furniture the other night to prepare for the arrival of our only-ever-first-ever Christmas tree.

When I first moved the furniture I thought it was pretty strange. It usually takes me a while to get used to these types of changes and I thought the coffee table placement was kind of dumb but by the time I went to bed, I decided that I like the furniture better this way than the way I had it before. I'm contemplating keeping it like this even after the tree is gone. We'll see what happens.

Thursday was Steven's only day off this week so we decided it was definitely the day to get the tree. We found this cute little place out between Buckley and Bonney Lake and guess what my favorite part was...

...this cute little cow!! He was so sweet and was making this adorable little mooing sound and licking my hand and I just wanted to keep him. Steven says he actually saw my heart melt when the cow made that tiny noise. Evidently he even has some antlers that they put on him and he's their little reindeer but I didn't get to see him in his costume.

And here's our tree!!!! Haha! Just kidding. It's a pretty one but ours is not flocked and it's much smaller. Plus, Steven is covering up the price tag but it is marked at $99 and we chose to spend a little less than that this year. Actually, we were going to be really economical and get the least expensive tree they had but, we both fell in love with this cute little noble.

It almost reaches our ceiling so I guess it isn't exactly "little" but it is really slim and fits perfectly in the 3 foot wide space we had cleared for it. We tried looking at a few others but we agreed it had to be this cutie right here.

Oh yeah, that's my husband, wrong cutie, I was referring to the tree, but I brought the husband home too. Like our new tree stand? The man at the farm guaranteed us that this would be the last tree stand we ever purchase. It actually is really easy to use and our tree is standing quite straight. I'm decently impressed with it thus far. Oh yes, and there are still loads of needles in the back of my car... should have put a blanket down.

Into the house we go!

Ta-daa!! There it is! Our only-ever-first-ever tree!! As it turns out, this is actually Steven's first ever real tree. I much prefer the real ones. I like the smell of them and the trail of needles they leave when you bring them in and how you have to get all worried about whether or not it's still drinking water and how they're a different size and shape every year and they all have different quirks about them and in later years you can talk about that one that was so-wide-it-took-up-the-whole-room and the one that wouldn't-stand-up-straight-for-anything and then one that had-a-bald-spot-on-every-side and the one with a crooked-top-so-it-looked-like-the-star-was-flying-through-the-sky-or-something -- I think you get the picture, yes?

So there it is. I'll put up some more pictures once it's all decorated and pretty. Steven is working all weekend so we won't get around to it until sometime next week. Hopefully Tuesday morning.

This is the only ornament on the tree so far. (Sorry it's so bright.) I decided it would be fun to get a new ornament each year that has something to do with a trip we took or a really fun activity that we enjoyed together. Obviously, the wedding and honeymoon are depicted here in the first of many years of new Christmas ornaments.