LET IT SNOW!!!

This last weekend gave us over a foot of snow in the valley and much more in the mountains! Mike and his brother had a blast snowmobiling everywhere by the cabin.


It took us fifteen minutes just to clean off our cars!

They also got a lot of work done at the cabin. It's awesome that we can still go up there and work even though the mountains are covered in snow. We are finishing the ceiling on the main floor with boards from the old cabin. Mike and his brother Andy have planed all them all so they look like new. They also finished installing the main lights. It looks great!

Feliz Navidad!

Our nephew Joshua had his Spanish school program this past weekend. Josh was one of the loudest and best singers in the group. He did a great job!!

Christina's sister Sarah has run a Spanish Immersion school in her basement for two years now. All while raising a family of six. Crazy huh? The kids have really learned how to speak Spanish fluently, and they all did a great job at singing. They definitely didn't need any help with the volume.


After the concert we headed to good ol' McDonalds for the kids to enjoy the playland. While the older ones were climbing and jumping around, little Annamarie was just talking and laughing to us. So cute!

This past Sunday was a special day because Christina's niece, Annamarie Dee Hansen, was blessed. She was blessed by her father Jared, and Mike was able to be apart of the circle. The blessing was beautiful! Little Annamarie is such a doll! Her Grandma Hansen made her blessing dress. Annamarie absolutely LOVES to sleep! She loves sleep even more than food! She is so calm and quiet, which is a change from Sarah's other five kids.

Christina's sister Julie came down from Nevada with her three oldest kids, Dillon, Landen, and Brook. It was a short trip, but it was so good to see them. Her kids are growing up! Christina gave Brook a bunch of hand-me-down clothes that Brook looks great in. Julie said that Christina and Brook could be sisters. What do you think?

Julie and Mike are both naturals when it comes to kids, and Sarah's kids loved to be with them!

Wow! It's already December...where has the year gone? Like everyone else we are staying busy. Mike is powering through and preparing for finals. This semester has been pretty rough, and sadly it is the first of many to come, but Mike has done well we know that he'll do great things.
We also have an exciting Christmas week coming up with Mike's birthday on the 26th and our 1st anniversary on the 30th and then New Years! It's our official Party Week!

A few fun things that have happened this month so far is Christina's work Christmas party. As many of you know the owners of Lightstream Communications absolutely LOVE food. So for our party they took us out to one of the best restaurants - Ruth's Chris. There we enjoyed amazing steak and salmon as well as great appetizers and desserts. Then at the end of the night the company gave their employees a $500 bonus check as well as an XBox 360!! An XBox makes perfect sense since the other thing Lightstream loves besides food is Halo, so this is just the next best thing. Lightstream is really generous and nice. Christina couldn't ask to work for a better company.

As for the Xbox...we wanted to keep it, but we decided that we could get a lot more things that we want/need in exchange for the cash. Mike did get to enjoy trying it for a couple of days though.

It's beginning to look a lot like CHRISTMAS!!!
Another thing we did over the holiday weekend was put up our Christmas decorations!!!



We don't have very many , but it was fun to pull out what we had and reminisce. We received some things from Aunt Ruthie that passed away last year so that was special to see her talent displayed again.

Do you think Mike looks at all like his brothers??! These are some classic pictures of how well Mike and his brothers, Dan & Andy, get along. Enjoy!

Yeah, we're done with the drywall!! Since we weren't snowed out from the cabin yet we went there over the Thanksgiving weekend for one last time. We were able to finish putting up all the drywall, so now we have just a little more pine siding to do in the loft and then the cabin will be sealed up inside! It's so exciting to see how far we've come and how good everything looks.
We were also able to finish up smaller things, like the wood around the stove pipe, installing the blinds, and hooking up some outside and inside lights.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

We hope that all of you enjoyed your Thanksgiving feast with family and friends. We spent the day with Mike's Dad's side of the family. We enjoyed eating until we were too full and then eating again. You can see that Mike thoroughly enjoyed the pie part of the meal!

Christina's assignment was to bring the rolls to dinner so for the first time ever Christina baked rolls. She knew she should have asked her Grandma for her yummy recipe, but she found a recipe on line that seemed simple enough so she tried them. They took so long and they only turned out okay, so Christina has learned her lesson - either use her Grandma's recipe or buy them.









We also decided to be a little crazy and try for a doorbuster laptop from Best Buy. It was FREEZING cold outside, but we waited from 12:30 am on the day after Thanksgiving until 5 am! It was pretty ridiculous, but we just bundled up with everything we had and we watched our little DVD player and waited. The line was super long even at 12:30, so even after all of that waiting we didn't get what we came for. :-( The good thing is that we decided not to fall into their ploy and buy something anyway. We just went home and crashed in bed at 6 am on Friday. We're crazy...as if you didn't already know that!! :)

the line and our "neighbors"...