Happ - Happiest Season of All!

Does anyone else get a little sad when the holidays end... they haven't even ended yet, but just the thought of returning to "normal life" makes me a little blue. That means Fisher will go back to school and we won't get to see family almost everyday (which is a good thing if you like your family) and no more games every night (which is a good thing too). It has been a great Christmas! A little hectic at times, but so much fun to see Curly get excited about giving and receiving gifts (obviously she liked the receiving part more). We were lucky to have my sister spend Christmas with us. She spent the summer at BYU-Jerusalem and I guess that inspired the rest of my family (except my brother and his wife) to go to Israel for a 15 day tour during Christmas... so poor Kristi had to hang out with us and Fisher's family. We loved it!

Some Favorite Christmas traditions with Fisher's family -

- The sibling gift exchange and opening of "The White Stocking." The stocking is the special secret container for our goals for the year. We write them on index cards, fold them in half and put our name on the front, then put them in a stocking made of white lace. Mom Lake puts them away and then at the end of the year we get to review our goals and make new ones. I actually achieved 3 of my 4 goals this year! Don't be too impressed, one of the goals was to actually plan 4 meals each week and then prepare them.

-The "Puddles Print" - This tradition started when Fisher and his siblings were little and had to wait for their parents to get up before opening their stockings on Christmas morning. I am not sure of the exact history, but they created a "Puddles Print" newspaper for their parents one year - with each child contributing stories, cartoons, etc... Every year after that they would do some project to kill time until their parents woke up. The Puddles Print has continued with all the original siblings and inlaws contributing and Fisher's sister in law compiling the paper. She always does a fabulous job and it so fun to read and see what a creative family we have.

- The German Christmas Eve party. My mother-in-law and her only brother are fully German. Every Christmas Eve we get together for a traditional German dinner - Rouladin, Roetkoe, and potato dumplings with gravy. I like all the food, except for the potato dumplings - they take hours to make and taste like tasteless, dry tapioca pudding squished into a big heavy ball. But, don't put too much stock in my critique. The Lake family loves them (or at least their German pride requires that they say that). This year we also did a nativity with the children. Curly was supposed to be a "lepard" (shepard), but decided to be grumpy instead. Louwas a sweet little angel.

- Christmas Gift Riddles - Dad Lake labels all the Christmas gifts with picture and word riddles. You can't just hand out the gifts because you don't know who they are for.

- Saturday bowling - The Saturday after Christmas the whole family goes bowling at 7:30 a.m. The original reason for going so early is that the games were super cheap that early in the morning, I guess the tradition stuck. After bowling, the whole family eats brunch together. There was one hitch this year, the traditional bowling alley was set for demolition...so we had to wait to go later and pay three times the price at a fancy bowling alley. It was still well worth it.

Homecoming!

Yay! It's Christmas time! It's so fun to see Curley get excited about Christmas and the festivities! We went to a party at "This is the Place" park. Curly loved riding the train (see picture) and she LOVED the live nativity. She keeps asking me if we can go see baby Jesus and the "baa-sheep" on the farm.






We had our first big snowstorms last week. Enough snow to actually make something. Curly insisted that she didn't want to wear a coat and she was pretty sure that you wear snowpants with nothing underneath... that didn't last long. She and Fisher made a snowball lantern - something Fisher learned on his mission in Finland. You make a whole bunch of snowballs and stack them into sort of an igloo shape with windows between each ball. Then you light a candle inside it. It was really pretty.








Fisher completed his last final on Tuesday. We are now more than half way done with Physical therapy school! Only 1 1/2 years to go! We immediately headed to Rexburg so that we could see my cute sister come home from her mission! Amberlee and I designed lovely shirts for us to wear using masking tape. Jeniel looked great. She was very happy and smiley. I am sure the people in New Jersey will miss her a lot!



This morning she was up early (thanks to the time difference), which was great for us when Curley got up at 5:30 a.m. Jeniel happily took her upstairs and entertained her.

Blog Tag!

Apparently there is such a thing as "blog tag" and I have been tagged...so 6 facts about me - I will try to make them interesting, but no promises!

1- I slept without a baby in my room last night for the first time in five months! Lou now has her own room! I am not sure how I feel about that yet...

2- I have a love/hate relationship with the terrible twos. I always love Curly, but sometimes I really hate her behavior! She is very extreme in everything she does!

3- I love shopping! I would be in heaven if I won a shopping spree - I could spend money without worrying about our lovely student budget!

4- Sometimes I wish I could go to school forever! I want to go to photography school, culinary school, cosmetology school, medical school, interior design... I could go on and on!

5- I am addicted to my family! My favorite thing to do is hang out with them. I love being home with my husband and kids. I love going to stay with my family in Idaho and I love visiting my in-laws too. Isn't it great that families are forever!

6- My little sister gets home from her mission in 6 DAYS!!!

I now tag Alli, Jill, Jodi, Miranda, Dana, and Tanya!

Thanksgiving Carols & Chandeliers

I love the holidays!! I got to spend almost this entire week with my family. I love just being home, playing games, eating yummy food... My family enjoyed some other fun activities as well.

The first activity requires a preface. When we were little my dad would call us all into the living room and then we would sing. This is probably a pretty normal activity for lots of families, but for us it was torture. My dad would dig up these complex musical pieces and make us practice the parts. We rarely performed these fancy musical numbers (thank goodness), but there were a few times we were asked to sing as a family - at church functions, family reunions, and even at a wedding in Finland once. Anyway, as much as we hated this when we were younger, we now love to sing together. On Thanksgiving evening, my youngest sister (and also the best singer in the family) suggested we go Thanksgiving caroling. We all practiced "For the Beauty of the Earth" and then visited several of my parents neighbors that were home without family and sang for them. They all expressed a lot of appreciation and we felt good that we had the opportunity to something kind and fun!

My parent's neighbors are serving as missionaries for the construction of the Rexburg Temple. On Friday, they called to see if any of us would be ineterested in putting together Chandeliers in the Bride's room of the temple... what a silly question!!! Of course we jumped at the opportunity. We spent the afternoon trying to figure out how to hang hundreds of crystals in the right way to create a beautiful chandelier. Afterward we got to take a tour of the nearly completed temple. It was beautiful.

Is it really already November?

This picture of my cute husband and baby is from my sister-in-laws wedding reception... I had to post it because it is so cute!

This week I had to do one of my least favorite things... that is take 'A' to get her picture taken. She hates having her picture professionally taken and cries the whole time (thus we haven't done it since last January). My goal was to get a picture of 'A' and 'L' together in their holiday dresses and then get pictures of 'L'... Things did not turn out as planned - I ended up with a whole bunch of cute pictures of 'A', one good one of 'L' and no good pictures of the two of them. We have Aunt Pika and mini m&m's to thank for 'A's pictures. Thanks Pika!

I got to have lots of GNOs this week! I met up with two of my best highschool girlfriends for dinner. I love these girls and I am so glad that they live in Utah so that I can see them!

Then, on Friday my sister and cousin came up from Provo. My aunt Pika, grandma and cousin Boogie also joined us. Boogie taught us how to suck hot chocolate through a grasshopper cookie - so good! We got a little silly about it (funny things happen when girls are left alone with chocolate) as demonstrated by this video...