Snow! Oh how it snows!

Yes, every winter we are reminded that we live in the "arctic north"! The snow last year began on Christmas eve and stayed till April. This year it started 10 days earlier. We had two big snowfalls just before Christmas, leaving us with about 2 feet of snow.

This is after the first snowfall.

Of course, the city decided to plow our street at 5 a.m., so we didn't move our cars out of the way and they got plowed in. After an hour and a half of shoveling, we made a path... sort of a U-shaped driveway that we could drive in, around the 4-foot snow piles, and out in front of our house.after digging out the cars

The city did us a great favor a couple of weeks later when they built our own private snow playground in the parking lot next door. We had a lot of fun watching this bulldozer scrape and push the snow into an absolutely gigantic mound. As soon as it was done Sam, Abby, Augie and I explored our new funland... sledding down one side, climbing up the other, playing king of the mountain, etc. It was a lot of fun. Standing on the top of our snowpile puts you above the roof line of our house... it's probably 18 to 20 feet tall.

Augie on top of the pile.

Now that a couple more weeks have passed without new snow the pile is getting to be a sad, brown, melty mound. But it will probably stay there till May!

Christmas in Idaho Falls

We had a wonderful Christmas season. Thank you to all who wrote, sent a card, called, or otherwise wished us a Merry Christmas. Here's a little of what we did to celebrate.

Decorations:
We really spent a lot of time decorating this year. We were a little late getting our tree up (usually it's up by Thanksgiving night) but when we got it up, we redecorated the whole living room, too. We took out a couch and a chair, brought up an armoire to put the TV in, moved our bedroom downstairs into the family room (it's so much warmer down there), and at last brought in the Christmas tree. Here's a look at it:
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On the top of the armoire we had some space to set up the traditional Christmas village. Every year James had painted a ceramic house to add to the village, until the stores quit selling them. We found 3 at D.I. last year and the children and I painted them. However, the highlight addition this year was Fin Fang Foom.

Who is Fin Fang Foom? He is a classic enemy to Iron Man from the early 60's comic books. James has a prized statue of him (it's actually a HeroClix game piece). James thought he looked so cool he could be on display all year long; I jokingly added that at Christmas he could wear a Santa hat. So this year Fin Fang Foom repented of his evil ways during the holidays and brought cheer to the Christmas village.

We also added garland above the windows and across the fireplace, a wreath on the door, and a shelf with Christmas decorations and Christmas sayings on the wall. It was fun to decorate so much this year.

Christmas dinner:
Last year we started a new tradition where everyone gets to pick their favorite foods and we cook them on Christmas eve. This makes a lot of cooking on Christmas eve, but leaves a lot of leftovers for dinner on Christmas. We always have donuts and hot cocoa for Christmas breakfast, too. Below is a video of our Christmas dinner.

Christmas morning:
As the most highly anticipated hour of the year, Christmas morning can't be beat. This year (like every year before it) I was awake every hour from 3:30 a.m. on, till about 8:00 a.m. when the children FINALLY woke up! Augie was the first one awake, and he woke Jim and Sam. They went upstairs, woke up Abby, and we enjoyed the wonder and excitement of discovering what Santa had left for us this year. I also have a video of this moment of mayhem and excitement, as well as some pictures of opening presents.

Opening pajamas Christmas eve


emptying stockings.... Jimmy has the Human Torch figure.. Abby displays the contents of her stocking


Daddy loves his Jack Kirby book.... Sammy got an Air Hockey game from Grandma... playing with the Dean family Christmas night

I guess the best gift of the season (materially speaking) was a car from Clay (it wasn't just Clay but Vern and some other of my family, too, I'm still not sure who) but Clay was kind enough to fix it up, clean it out, and he and Rachael drove it up and presented it to us. We had it licensed and insured the same day. It's a '92 Ford Aerostar, and we think it's awesome! It's got digital displays, captain's chairs, nice upholstery, working heaters, no chips or cracks or rust, four working doors... it's pure luxury! It's humbling to us to realize how much our family must love us to go to such lengths to provide us a reliable, working car. We can't say thank you enough!

On Christmas day our good friends the Deans invited us to share in their holiday dinner. They had quite the feast: turkey, pork roast, stuffing, green bean casserole, yams, homemade rolls, and more. We were stuffed! Later the children all played Cranium Hullabaloo and we had a lot of fun talking and laughing. It was a fun night! Too bad Christmas only comes once a year. There's so much good to be enjoyed that I wish it would last longer.