Merry Christmas!

I have never written this much in a post before but you should definitely read this one, DON'T just skim!

We have spent time at both the Schauerhamer's and the Baum's. When we were at the Schauerhamer's on Tuesday the funniest thing happened. This story makes my mom laugh uncontrollably, and I have to admit it is very funny. So it all started with the 12 days of Christmas that some family was doing for the Schauerhamers. On the 10th day of Christmas they recieved two bottles of Martinelli's Sparkling Cider. The girls, Emily and Joanie (Andrew's younger sisters), were really excited and wanted to open them right away and I said we should put them out in the snow and let them get nice and chilled for dinner that evening. They looked at me like I was crazy for wanting to put them out in the snow but I assured them that that was what I had always done and to make sure to put them in the backyard to prevent anyone from wanting to steal our fine Martinelli's. So Emily took them out to the back porch and placed them in the snow. They fell in and were barely visible amongst the white fluff. So a few hours later, Joanie got really anxious and wanted to go out and get them, I said we should probably just wait until dinner and at least until their mom got home. A half an hour later, Elaine (Andrew's mom) comes in the door from the garage and she was laughing, she said that she had just seen some dog trotting across the street with a bottle of Martinelli's in it's mouth. She said she felt sorry for the neighbors because she had no idea that it could be ours. Joanie, Emily and I all looked at each other at once and I told them to hurry and go check to make sure that ours were still out there. Sure enough there was only one bottle left. By this time it was dark, but I thought we could probably still go out and see if we could find the bottle where ever the dog had dropped it, if it had. I wasn't about to go out in the snow so I sent Andrew and Emily. They bundled up and headed out into the cold to go hunt down our prized Martinellis. They went up and down the roads looking and decided to go ask the neighbors they knew who had a dog to see if they had seen our Martinellis. The first house they went to, they knocked on the door and when the door opened they noticed a big dog sitting there in the house, but the owner said that the dog had been in all evening and usually didn't go far when it was outside, but they might check this other family that they knew of who had a dog of our description. So they trudged a few houses down to find that the family was about ready to leave somewhere for the evening, and were all in their car ready to go except for the dad. The dad soon came out and Andrew asked, despite how stupid it sounded, "We were just wondering if you had seen your dog this evening and if it may have somehow brought a Martinelli's with it". The guy looks at Andrew confused and asked what the heck is a Martinelli's. Andrew explained, the guy, he could tell was a bit irritated but gave in and went to find his dog. So the guy goes into the garage to find the dog in its dog house, he reaches in and pulls out.....YES the Martinelli bottle, he turns and looks at Andrew completely dumbfounded. The foil on the top had been torn to shreds but the seal had not been broken. I feel kind of bad now that we took it from the dog since he had obviously been planning on having a bit of his own Christmas cheer. Andrew said that the funniest thing was just the look on the guys face as he pulled the bottle out of the dog house. So needless to say we enjoyed our Sparkling cider for dinner that evening and enjoyed it all the better.

We were at the Schauerhamers for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, we had a really fun Christmas Eve party at Grandma and Grandpa Hawkes' house and with all of the Hawkes relatives. The festivities included really good clam chowder, made by me and Grandma Hawkes, cheesey bread and yummy cheese cake. We also had probably the best nativity replay I have ever seen, it had everyone from the donkey who brought Mary to several angels singing praises. Leah was fortunate to get the part of Baby Jesus, so we took off her Christmas jumper and left her in her white turtleneck and tights. We tried to wrap her in swaddling clothes but she just wouldn't be swaddled, or held for that matter. She was basically all over the place wreaking havoc amongst the barn animals and her poor parents, Mary and Joseph. It was, I guess, your typical nativity scene where a one year old plays baby Jesus. I didn't have my camera so we will have to rely on Aunt Crystal to get us those pictures. I'll post them when I get them.

Christmas morning was wonderful and full of lots of presents for the Schauerhamers. Despite the snowstorm, Grandma and Grandpa Hawkes were able to come over for the occasion. Leah recieved one present from Santa, a purple snow saucer. She'll love it once we get out to use it. Which reminds me, I do have some pictures and a little video clip of Leah in the yellow snow sled out in the snow on the farm, but it's of course on my camera. Later..... I suppose. Breakfast was furnished by Jeremy, Andrew's sister, and it took us close to three hours to open all of the presents. It sounds like we had a lot of presents but not really, mostly it was just the fact that we took turns in a family of.....well, there were 11 of us there and that makes for a long "ceremonial" opening of the Christmas presents. Afterwards we had a delicious meal and then headed up through the snow storm to Ashton. It took us about a half an hour to get our gutless Honda out of the driveway but we were soon on our way. Once we got to the Baum house we pulled into their driveway and got stuck again. It's as if nobody owns a snowblower around here! Or more likely, it was Christmas morning and no one was thinking to blow out their driveways for company. Well, we opened presents here at the house that Mom and Dad had been saving for us to open and we got many wonderful things. My Mom, as always, went a little out of control getting Leah things but when she's the only Grand-baby then who can blame her. Cute things to wear, fun toys and even a cute little baking set. The picture shows one of the cute outfits and boots that she got from Grandma. My camera is MIA amongst the Christmas paraphenelia. I am missing pictures from....well.... I dont' remember what's on there but for now you just get the Christmas pictures of those that I have taken with my Mom and Dad's camera.

Pretty stylin' if you ask me. She's way better dressed than I am. That's okay! She's cuter anyways.
We have been enjoying a very relaxing break, watching the snow fall outside, playing games and of course putting the "ceremonial" puzzle together. We have also been trying new hairstyles for Leah. This happens to be one that my Mom did. She said she used to do the same thing on me. She calls them "true pigtails".

As a gift for my Mom and Dad, Andrew and I compiled some of their amazing pictures that they have taken around the farm and put them into three seasonal posters and then framed them. One for summer/spring, one for harvest/fall and one for winter. If you click on the picture you will be able to see them a little better. Sorry about the glare on the glass but I wanted to show you the finished product.

BTW, I made them and ordered them from shutterfly.com.

The snow just keeps falling. Andrew has a daily routine of getting out the small snowblower and plowing a little trail for the those who have to replenish the wood in the wood burning furnace out back. Andrew enjoys doing things like that me thinks.

We have been doing a lot of relaxing, as has the cat. See if you can make her out in the following picture.

Dad got out the snowmachines and Andrew took advantage today. He said he couldn't seen anything outside amongst all of the white. He was going really fast and all of a sudden he hit a bump and felt like he was in the air for a while and then landed a few seconds later. He landed so hard he almost fell off. He stopped, took a big breath and walked back to see what he had just done. He came to the realization that he had just jumped an entire country road! What a goof! He said it scared the living daylights out of him. From now on he's going to slow down until he knows the area a little bit better.

Well that's a bit of an update from the snowcaps of southeast Idaho. I hope you are all having a wonderful Christmas break and enjoying your time with friends and family.

Cuz, Leah sure is!