Christmas Tree

I had high hopes of putting up our tree before our vacation, but packing always takes more time than I expect, so we did it when we got home.

Marcel isn't a fan of putting up/decorating the tree, but he helped his mom do her tree, and as a way to start our own traditions, he was happy to help this year :)

It has ornaments on it now, but we took the picture to see if I was happy with the lights, which I don't think I am, but I won't fix them now.  One day I'll update this post with a picture of our decorated tree, which Lilli is fascinated with.  She didn't go near the tree last year, but after just 2 days she's decided she likes the ornaments and presents!

Christmas

This year, our Christmas celebrations began on Christmas Eve. Marcel and I attended church and then headed to my mom's house for our Christmas there. We had delicious appetizers and desserts, which is our normal food when she has us for Christmas Eve. That group of people is getting quite large as just about all of us have spouses/significant others to bring. It was a lovely time together, but we didn't get any pictures.

Marcel and I asked for money for Christmas so we could jump start our cruise fund, but my mom still got us a few presents. I got new slippers, an iTunes gift card and a bathroom scale, which I already love having (especially this morning when it said I've lost a few pounds!). Marcel got a new purple argyle sweater, which he has been dying to have, and blank DVDs. Also, one of the traditions for our stockings is to get lottery tickets and I've never had much luck with them but this year, Marcel and I together won $33, hooray for more cruise money!

We hung out for awhile before heading home for a short night of rest before Christmas. Marcel and I got up at 5:45am, so that we could have our own Christmas before heading to my dad's at 8am. Yes, it was early, but it was so wonderful to have that time together. We continued our tradition of having monkey bread for breakfast and not having stockings. We'll start that one either when I find semi-matching stockings that I like or when we have kids, whichever comes first!



Our tree with presents

Trying on my too small slippers from my mom

Marcel's corn on the cob grilling tool, but the picture is even better because we both wrapped just about all our gifts to each other in either cereal, oatmeal or frozen waffle boxes.  We LOVE breakfast at this house :)

Marcel also decided to seal every edge of every box with masking tape so I had to cut them all open

Marcel got me a new wallet (which I desperately needed and asked for constantly) that I love and new slippers

Marcel and his Harry Potter movie collection (Movies 1-6)
I think it was what he was most excited to receive and now we're about to have a HP marathon

2nd married Christmas!

After presents, we headed to my dad's for our 3rd Christmas of the year.  We enjoyed another delicious breakfast of egg mcmuffins (are they still called that if they aren't from McDonald's?) and spent quite a bit of time opening gifts.  And yet again we were spoiled!  Payton & Presley got each of us new pajama pants, while my dad and Cindy got us a new knife block (the only thing we asked for) and a box full of $1 bills!

New hats from Aunt Dede

Payton & Presley each showing off their new iPods, which they LOVED and used all day long, even before they had music on them, bcause they record videos and play the radio.

A fun gift to receive :)

Emily and Matt were very happy to get a blu-ray player and surround sound system but are now asking to take Marcel home with them so he can get it all set up.

So excited to receive a box full of books (including the whole Harry Potter series)

Again, with the excitement for books.
Hope one day my kids will love reading as much as I did at this age (and these 2 do)

We enjoyed a great ham dinner and then hours and hours of playing Wii Sports Resort & Rock Band 3, where I was finally able to move up to medium level on the guitar/bass! We also watched the Top 40 music videos of 2010 according to VH1.

Overall, we had a GREAT Christmas season.  It always seems to be over so fast, but it is always so much fun!

Christmas

Christmas this year was super busy, since we had only been in Idaho for a few days, but like always it was a good day spent together. We spent the morning together doing our own Christmas, before heading to my mom's for Christmas and turkey lunch. Around dinner time, we headed to my dad's and had a delicious nacho bar before playing a few hours of Rock Band. No presents at dad's house until the next night at 5pm, when Cindy's girls got home. It was a bit rushed to eat dinner and do gifts that night since I had taken a shift at Banana Republic starting at 9pm, but we still had a great time. Marcel took pictures of that Christmas on Cindy's camera so I'll have to get those from her, but these are the pictures we have!

With the move so close to Christmas, we didn't decorate our Oregon house and thought it was silly to decorate this house so we (mainly Marcel) got super creative and hung lights over our lamp! I was so excited to decorate since it was our first married Christmas together and we got Christmas decorations/ornaments last year for Christmas and had Christmas lights like crazy from our wedding. Now we'll just have to wait for next year!

Not many pictures of just me on the blog, because I rarely like any of them, but this one I deemed decent enough for publishing. It was my reaction to our Christmas tree

in the kitchen Christmas morning, "making" breakfast

notice our delicious breakfast...nothing like Peanut Butter Captain Crunch! I love cereal every morning and Christmas is no exception :)

Marcel's QUEEN

Marcel got all clothes from me which I hated, but with our extremely small budget for the whole year and especially Christmas, I got him needed items: dress clothes for teaching. I liked this excited face the most!

Us and the tree!

Marcel wanted to head to my mom's in his pajamas but I made him dress up, just so we could take this picture. My mom and Don just moved into their new house and still managed to have such a pretty tree!

missing Hannah :(

they refused all weekend to take a decent picture together, but I guess finally Marcel won out....Emily & Matt, who are soon headed to Vegas & Arizona to watch BSU in the Fiesta Bowl

Marcel and I were spoiled like always, but some of our favorite gifts include: cartridges for my Cricut cutter (hopefully I'll get motivated to get creative), musical art for our hobby room, 5 sets of the china we registered for to finish out our collection at 8, Reba seasons 3 & 4, a Wii, and a TomTom...of course a few articles of clothing and socks were included in our stockings along with some movie tickets, Moxie Java gift certificates and tokens for a car wash!

Tradition for Shoemaker Girls

I said in my last post that going home allowed our tradition to continue and the truth is that it is a fairly new tradition but we've enjoyed doing it each year.

We always try to coordinate our outfits, which is harder than it seems because we have to plan it far in advance since me and Hannah both fly home for Christmas and don't have our entire wardrobe to select from...

2008

2007

2006

Christmas in Idaho

Marcel and I were able to go to Idaho the 27th early early to spend Christmas with my family. I did have to leave Marcel behind 2 days so that I could go wedding dress shopping. Needless to say it was productive because I found "the perfect one" (as my sister wants me to say) and it is now at my mom's house waiting to be delivered to me in the spring in time for the big day in May! Going home also allowed the tradition of sister pictures to continue--see the newer post!

Some of the best!

Mom's Christmas tree

Marcel Drew & MaryBeth--again in Idaho!

Sisters having fun shopping

Wedding dress shopping!

It's okay to be on the web because:

1) Marcel doesn't read my blog and now that it is "private" he hasn't been invited yet. Oops :)

2) It is a very ugly dress from the first place we went that had about 5 choices ;(

Christmas 2008

The Arctic Blast 2008 caused some major plan changes which left me and Marcel alone to spend Christmas together. This was the first time we had spend December 25th together and we had a great first Christmas. I am also looking forward for our first married Christmas next year!!

We woke up to a white Christmas and even received some new flurries! After opening our presents, we made monkey bread, which was breakfast and lunch :) Then we went to the theaters to see Valkyrie. The adventure in that was that we got stuck on my road trying to get there. On our way home we decided to shovel out my road even more so I'd be able to get to work the next morning. As soon as we had finished we lost power. We continued inside to light all our candles and make emergency food in case it didn't come back on soon. After that was completed, the power came on and we started our Christmas dinner: ham, homemade french fries, corn and chocolate pie! It wasn't as extravagant as others, I'm sure, but for our first holiday meal, it was a huge success!

Some of the best pictures!

"Always Kiss Me Goodnight"

Marcel and his coveted new beanie

On our way out to the theater

Proud of our wonderful meal

Christmas Decorations!

So in keeping with the holiday spirit I decided I'd take a picture of how I'm decorating my house for Christmas this year. I am finally in the Christmas spirit after Zoo Lights and am listening to nothing but Christmas music, which is huge for me, and am loving all our snow!

As some of you may know, I won't be returning home to Idaho for Christmas until the 27th (I got an extra day off, it was supposed to be the 28th!) so I'll be having my first Christmas away from my parents and sisters. Marcel, his mom and little brother are headed back here in the next few days to spend Christmas with me so I'm not completely alone. They will then drive to Idaho on the 26th and we'll all drive back on the 30th--hoping the roads aren't closed between here and there. One of my roommates is already at home and the other will be going home Monday so it is up to me to supply the Christmas decorations. I did buy some stockings for me and Marcel but after I got them home and realized they weren't going to be Christmas presents from Santa I decided I don't really like them. Marcel and I are going to hit some big after Christmas sales so we have stuff to decorate next year even if I have to do it twice (we'll hopefully be moving back to Idaho mid-December 2009)

The big decorations:

I colored a Christmas tree with the little kids at work, even had so few kids because of our snow storm that we got to glitter so it even has Christmas lights and a gold star at the top! I think before Christmas I'll do some rearranging of the furniture so that our presents look pretty but for now my house has the presents for Marcel and what the 2 of us got Snoh & Coco.

P.S. If you click on the picture it makes it really big and you can look at the tree up close :)

Zoo Lights

Saturday night Marcel and I braved the "Arctic Chill" as the news has been calling it and went to experience Zoo Lights for the first time. We had had it planned for that night before the snow and freezing temperatures and we decided to go through with it anyway. It was a nice 35 degrees but no precipation.

This was me after dressing warm, including 5 layers on top (that includes a 2 layer jacket) and leggings (a pair of my 24 HR Fitness work pants) and jeans on bottom. My one regret was that I forgot to switch to my soft fluffy warm socks.

We spent a long time in line in order to ride a:

to see the entire zoo in lights. We weren't very good photographers while on the train but it was still beautiful and definitely worth the wait in the cold, without hot chocolate because I had just deposited all my cash--it's too dangerous to carry around!

The only animal we saw in person was a

and we even saw one that was just 4 months old. See

Here are some of my favorites of our artwork.

Overall it was great night and a great date before Marcel heads back to Washington for Christmas break...just in time to return to Forest Grove with his mom and brother for Christmas here with me before our quick trip to Idaho (in which we'll do Christmas and also leave him on his own so I can go wedding dress shopping!)