Sunday services.

Notice the red and green ties for Christmas

Ok, so back to my snow for a minute. Due to all the snow, our church services were cancelled this past weekend, so Derrick and Chad donned their white shirts and ties so that we could have Sacrament and our own Testimony meeting. It was really nice... and I am especially grateful that I have these men in my life who can perform these blessings in our house!

This is definately one of my favorite Christmas memories from this holiday season!

Merry Christmakkuh!

Notice the Hanukkah decorations? Really not that easy to find here!


So, those of you that know me, know that I love parties. I love to throw them, and I love to make up holidays. Not really into the cooking thing, but I just love to have people over. So, Sunday night was the first night of Hanukkah, and to celebrate the Jew in all of us, we threw a Christmakkuh dinner. It was great! We had 23 people over (missed you Mom, Owen's family, Evans' family, and everyone else we invited that couldn't make it!), and had a great time! We don't necessarily have enough seats, but that doesn't seem to matter. We had brisket (thanks Tweetie for the "brisket hot line"! - it was super good!), Liz made Latkes (they were YUMMY!), green bean casserole, a VERY creative salad that Susie made up, and Heidi brought some Challah - and then some very yummy desserts. We also had dreidles, chocolate gelt (coins), and blue and white candy canes (that's the "Christma" part of "Christmakkuh"). It was a lot of fun, and we truly appreciate that our friends and family are up for my made up holidays!

Ooohhh... and we just celebrated Mexican Christmas at the Geigenmiller's house. Thanks for making up holidays too! It was sooo, sooo good!!!

Still snowing.

The first day the snow started - like last Tuesday or Wednesday

Eating "snow cream" dad made for us.

Geigenmillers, Browns, Teames, Allens, Neffs and Huckvales (and that's only some of them!)

Taking Reed sledding. He loved it!

All geared up.

Chad and his friend, Charles

Sledding down our hill.The "concession stand" in our basement - that's Ben Teames

Watching the 1:15 screening of Wall-E

Our house today. It took us 40 minutes to get the car out of the driveway yesterday, so now we just park it across the top.

Macy buried on our trampoline.

Sledding in the driveway.

Cooper loves it!

So, a couple of years ago we went to Canada for Christmas. I compared our house today to that time we were in Canada. We've had 24" of snow in our town, more snow than we've had since 1968. Crazy!... and we're still expecting more.

Outside of all the cabine fever, the kids are still loving the snow. At our house, this equals about 17 children who... build tunnels, sled, have snowball fights, eat snow cream, eat TONS of popcorn and show movies in the Huckhood Theatre... I still haven't gotten a good snowman out of them yet though. Gonna be a white Christmas for us... and I'm so excited! It's so magical here right now. Love it!

Snow week.

So, forget the whole "snow day" thing... it's turned into snow week... or maybe "snow-end-of-the-year"... or, as the news is calling it, "Arctic Blast '08"! The kids had school on Tuesday, that's all. It didn't even really start "snowing" until about Thursday, but now it hasn't let up. The wind is howling outside, blowing the snow in every direction. My mom's flight got cancelled coming in from L.A., and now she's staying home for Christmas. Our road is closed, because we live on a steep hill, but it's great for sledding on and is always crowded with lots of kids having fun! (The past couple of days we've had tons of kids at our house while on their sledding breaks.) Our church was cancelled because the roads are too dangerous, and our Christmakkuh party might have to be just for us... and the Geigenmillers (they only live down the street).... and maybe Bob and Susie (they're not too far)... but don't know if the Petrowski's will make it, or any of the other guests. That's ok... I'd rather have them be home, safe, than out driving in this craziness. It's making the whole "Christmas" thing seem kind of odd though. The kids didn't get to have their holiday parties, and we won't get to sing Christmas carols in church tomorrow and see all our friends, so it's making it all kind of strange. Well... what can you do? Love the snow... but the cabin fever is definately setting in. Today we took a very slow drive to the gas station about 5 miles away just to get some soda and bread. Anything to get out of the house for a while.

Snow day.

So on Sunday, it snowed... A LOT. At least for us, a lot. Church only lasted 45 minutes and then everyone was sent home. Not enough for sledding though... but all over the place, hard to drive, hard to see. So yesterday, the kids lucked out with a snow day. No snow though. Most of the snow was gone. Patches of it all over the place, but still no sledding. Chad and Derrick both felt that it was a wasted snow day as there was no sledding to take place. More snow is expected later this week though, and we might possibly have a White Christmas, so keep your fingers crossed (grandma, be prepared!). So, yesterday, I had 12 kids at our house for most of the day looking for things to do. (It was BEAUTIFUL outside, but very COLD. I think the high was like 27*... and it's not gonna be much better today. I've just been leaving Reed in his footy jammies cause it keeps him warm.) So, we played games, decorated a gingerbread house, watched some Christmas movies, and just hung out. It was a nice way to spend a cold day!

Plumbers.

Ok. So the plumber is currently on his way back. He only left about an hour ago. I called my contractor (who hasn't been here since like June), to report to him that our new bathroom was currently flooding for no apparent reason, getting onto the new carpeting, and going down the heating duct. The toilet has filled up before, not sure why, we just took it to fact that it's on a sump pump, and it's "below ground", so maybe it just took longer to flush, but it's never so fully overflowed, so this time I was stressed. Well... I'm happy to report that after the plumber, the contractor and the framer cut a hole in the side of our house in our siding to get below our basement, they discovered that no one actually plugged in the sump pump (duh...), so it's never fully been working and there is water all over the crawl space. At least it's an easy fix.