Merry Christmas

Here we are celebrating Christmas 2008 already. This year was decidedly low-key. I stayed home with the kids on Christmas Eve, and Jennifer worked until noon then did a little last minute shopping on the way home. We went to the Christmas Eve service at church at 4:30, then came home for dinner, cookies and presents. We had little smokies and ham and cheese with crackers. I decided to try a different cookie recipe this year and made chocolate crackle cookies - they turned out great and Santa is sure to gain an extra pound or two.
After we finished dinner, we opened presents - Santa didn't come during church this year, so we had to wait until morning to see what he would bring.







Alison got a "Belle" Disney princess costume, a dance-along DVD, a coloring book, a bouncing ball, pajamas and a robe. Eli got a dump truck full of mega blocks, a big stuffed dog, a tool kit and a Little Einsteins baton. In the morning, Santa brought Alison a DVD (The Little Mermaid) and Eli got a new flashlight. Flashlights are very popular around here!



It finally warmed up a bit around here today - it's almost 20 degrees! Both kids got to play in the snow for a while. This was really Eli's first time being able to play in the snow, and he seemed to enjoy it.





I just asked Alison what else she got for Christmas, and she said "Jesus! Jesus is the best present!"

Dug out

Gee, that was fun. We got about 10 inches of snow over the weekend, and it formed a very lovely series of drifts across the driveway and street. I watched the city play with their new toy last night - apparently they have a new New Holland tractor with a bucket on the front and a snowblower mounted on the back. The driver got to the entrance of the neighborhood, then turned around and began attacking the snow drifts with the blower.



I tried tackling a little of the big drift across the driveway last night, without a lot of success given the strong winds. I didn't have to go to work until 12:30 today, and Jennifer was home all day, so I had plenty of time this morning to work on shoveling. Luckily it didn't take too long. I cleared a small patch about 6 feet wide - just long enough for our neighbor to see me and drive over with his skid steer. Ben had the entire driveway cleared in about 5 minutes.

Big Bad Blizzard

We are officially going nowhere today. We're getting somewhere between 7 and 13 inches of snow, but the wind is gusting to 47 miles an hour so it's a little hard to measure anything. Half of our driveway is completely clear, but there's a pretty big snow drift across the other half.

The local news radio station posted up this video of driving around Fargo - it's proof enough that we don't need to go anywhere.

Alison's First Time Skating

Here's a short little video of Alison's first time skating.

Super Holiday Mega Blog

Warning - many pictures ahead! It's getting closer to Christmas and there just seems to be too many pictures to take!
Last weekend we went to Jennifer's Christmas party in Grand Forks. The bank booked a block of rooms at the CanadInn, which also has a large waterpark attached to it. The kids had a ball at the water park, but the party got a little too long for them and nobody slept very well. By the morning everyone was pretty tired and cranky, so we came back home pretty early.
I don't know why, but I really like these two pictures. I think it pretty much captures the pace we're living at now.





Just cute. Eli managed to do this all by himself.



We got the tree put up this week. I was having some problems finding one of the plugs for the lights, so Alison decided to get "under the hood" and help me out.





Eli had to make his final inspection to make sure all the lights were working.



Today we took Alison ice skating for the first time. It was also my first time in at least 10 years, and amazingly enough we both stayed off our butts. Alison's decided that she really wants to take lessons now and go skating every day.

Serious about grilling

We had some wonderful hawaiian barbecue chicken kabobs for dinner tonight. I'd like to share the North Dakota version of the preparation tips with you.

First, assemble the kabobs and place in marinade. Next, open the garage door. Start the lawn tractor, lower the plow blade, and clear a small area in front of the garage door. Stop the tractor and roll the grill from the garage into the freshly cleared area. Start the grill. Return to the plow while the grill preheats and clear off some of the driveway. Drive the plow back to the grill so the headlights illuminate the workspace. Retrieve the kabobs from inside and place on medium high heat. Plow for five minutes, then brush kabobs with marinade. Continue to plow, turning kabobs occasionally, 10 minutes or until chicken is done.

For added convenience, wear leather gloves while plowing - it eliminates the need for tongs to turn the kabobs.