Particularly for Andrew

We missed you, Andrew, and hope that somehow you can see these little videos and know how much, especially with the fire part!

Christmas Eve 2010

 When we came home from our Dinner out at the Chinese restaurant, we decided to do some more baking. Linnea made the Russian tea cakes and I made the rosettes and the almond bark pretzels.

 While we worked, Will read stories to us. The first one was Christmas at Bullerby, and then he read A Child's Christmas in Wales. Then we listened to that one again read by Dylan Thomas.

 When everything was cleaned up we celebrated the birth of Jesus with our traditional Asti, Martini Rossi. YUM!! Then we watched It's a Wonderful Life.

This morning there were Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus!

Baking and more baking

Yesterday was a baking, relaxing day. Only Dennis left the house to go to work, the rest of us stayed home ALL DAY! But we were productive!

I did two batches of my Swedish Christmas bread. Instead of making them in wreathes this year, I braided them and just put in cardamom, cinnamon and brown sugar. The second batch I drizzled icing and added red cherries to the top after baking.

Then we had a hot chocolate break while Linnea began her recipe of Ginger cake with crystallized ginger.

Ooooo, it was yummy!

Happy Christmas! During all that baking, Andrew called. It was so nice to talk to him. We really miss him, and he said he misses just sitting on the couch in sweats with freezing temps outside and a cozy house inside!

Anniversary Dinner

Well, this is what the old couple looks like now! We had a lovely prime rib dinner with our delightful children, Will and Linnea. Don't they look like twins?

Dinner together again

Last night was the first night Linnea was home, so we had a little Italian food for dinner. Cin cin!
PS Maybe someone can tell me how I can outsmart blogger and not make all my photos landscape?

The mailman is Santa!

This morning the mailman stopped by out house with a mail box FULL of SEVERAL packages! With every adult in the house ordering online and having them sent here, we all got parcels this morning. What fun!

(This is Dennis bringing in the mail, not the mailman himself!)

Lunar Eclipse

I took a bunch of pictures with and without a tripod. They didn't seem to be turning out with my little camera and its limited telephoto lens. But this one turned out pretty well! Too bad I gave up, the total one might have been OK!