Our New Love

I guess you could say we have a slight addiction. You just can't go through life with ONE kind of Stephens Hot Cocoa. Variety is the spice of life. We are living up to that saying. We are trying to have EVERY kind of Stephens in our cupboard! It is so good.

The famous Apple Cider Syrup all bottled up and gifted for Christmas.
Margie loves to make this syrup. Andrew loves to eat it. It is a perfect union!
We decided to share the goodness with friends this Christmas.
Andrew made the tags and put the ribbons on them. Margie made the syrup. A perfect team!

Our Stockings

Both of our Moms had made us the best stockings when we were kids. Unfortunately we no longer have them so we decided to make our own.

Andrew is so creative. He didn't even use a pattern he just started cutting.

They turned out fabulous and we love them.

Our Christmas Home

Margie absolutely LOVES Christmas. LOVES Christmas. She has many, many boxes of Christmas stuff. This year, we didn't put everything out. We decided to keep all of the Christmas dishes packed up. Here are a few pictures of our cute home. We just love it. Right in the middle of taking pictures the camera battery died, and by the time the battery charged we never got back to taking more pics. But, these will do and when we get back to Idaho after Christmas we will take more pictures. One of the traditions in Margie's family is they always put up the same ornament first each year. Each kid had their own "first" ornament. Once they have decorated their whole home, they come and put the ornaments on the tree. The tree is always the last thing. So, we have picked out our "first" ornament. It is the ornament that Margie's mom gave us last year, our first Christmas together. It is a fun ornament of a back window of a car (because we love to travel and take road trips) that we were able to put a picture of us inside (because we love to take pictures). It fits us so perfectly! So, here we are, putting up the first ornament on the tree.

Andrew surprised Margie one day. He came to pick her up from work and when they turned the corner, the lights were put up on the outside of the house. It looked so wonderful. He really wanted to do more lights, and we have the lights to do it, but we are going to be gone for Christmas and with the snow and ice and all that jazz, we opted out of the LIGHT EXTRAVAGANZA this year! JOY TO THE WORLD! (quote from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation)

Here is our cute tree with all of the lights and ornaments on it. It is only a 6 footer. Margie can not WAIT for the day that we have a huge nice, "Martha Stewart-y" tree in the front living room and then this fun tree in the back family room. That is her goal. It will happen some day! The ornaments on this tree are all from Margie. Her grandma use to send them ornaments each year when she was younger. She still has all of them. Even the first one she got the Christmas of the year of her birth. It is a little disheveled, but she still has it. Now, we are also getting ornaments from both parents. This year they both got us ornament with the theme of our FIRST home! How perfect!

Another thing that Margie loves is the Nativity. She get a new one each year. This is where we decided to display the majority of them this year. There are others sporadically located throughout our home. It just brings a nice feeling to our home to have these displayed.

We just love Christmas....

Next post....how we made our stockings....

The post after that....what we gave to people for Christmas....

The post after that....WHO KNOWS???

Thanksgiving Week

Where in the world does the time go? It felt like just yesterday when we were hanging out with our families for Thanksgiving and here we are about to leave on Friday for Christmas vacation. Sorry it took so long to post our Thanksgiving vacation. But alas, no more whining that the Walker's have not posted in forever....enjoy reading all about out Thanksgiving!!!!
We absolutely loved our Thanksgiving Week. We were able to hang out with both of our families. We started the week with the Uminski Clan! The U-crew if you will! Everyone gathered in Rigby, Idaho where we stayed and Spencer and Ariana's! The whole family was there, except for the Hillman's, who we missed so much!

We hung out in the kitchen a great deal! Why not it is Thanksgiving!

On Wednesday, we took a fieldtrip up to Ashton, with a short detour at the Chester Dam! Spencer is in charge of some part of this Dam. That is what he does, he is a Dam engineer! Marek, was not all that excited about the fieldtrip!

Here is the Chester Dam! Right around the corner of our house!

Kati was trying to keep Forrest warm. He had no coat on!

After the Chester Dam we took our fam to Ashton, Idaho to see our humble abode. It was so exciting to show them our home. They all loved it so much!

The first thing the boys did when they got on our porch was hit down all the icicles. These Texas boys! Richie took one inside and put it in our sink. He is so weird! =)

Our family in OUR house!! What fun! We were so glad that they were able to come up to Ashton and see where we live and where I work and all the fun that Ashton has to offer!!!!! We love you FAMILY!

Cute little Nadia standing in the snow in her dress shoes!! She is such a doll!!!

Thursday morning we watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. Andrew use to GO to it when he was younger. It is definitely a family tradition that we ALWAYS watch this parade!! Forrest and Nadia got really excited when Santa FINALLY came!!!

At one point Marek was playing with Mom's phone and he actually called Elizabeth! He just wanted her to know that we missed her!! How thoughtful little Marek is! We left the Uminski's home at about 1:00 and headed down to Salt Lake to spend the rest of the week with Andrew's family!

Here are all of us sitting down to eat at the dinner table. Andrew's mom did a great job decorating the table. Andrew put the ribbon that was holding the napkin together and put it around his forehead. Everyone else followed his example. What a trendsetter!

Here is the table before we all sat at it! Doesn't it look great!

Yummy Food!!!!

Look at that beautiful Turkey and Mom!!

Best part of Thanksgiving...the pies! Andrew's dad made a special pecan pie, I can't have nuts, so he made a pecan pie that had half with pecans and half without! It was really good.

On Friday, we went BOWLING. We can not even remember the last time we went bowling. It was a blast.

Andrew is so talented!

Here goes Margie! Look at that great form!!!

This bowling alley is rough! It calls a fowl on you if you go over the line. Well, when Kate was setting up the stand thing....she pushed it too far up and.....FOWL! It was really funny!

Here are our scores. Andrew and I were Troy and Gabriella. At this moment in time we had the VERY EXACT score! We bowled a much better game the previous game. But we just thought it was fun we had the same score!

There goes Andrew! Hottie!

The whole crew!

On Saturday we went to IKEA for breakfast. Lucky us it was FREE! We didn't even know! It was part of their Black Friday deal that carried over to Saturday!

Then Andrew, Mom, and I went over to Oreck to get us a heater for our Ashton home! Mom fell in love with the cordless vacumm! It was actually pretty exciting. We got it of course. Jameson, her grandson, needs a vacuum to use!

Here is little Jameson having fun with the box that his vacuum cleaner came in!

We got to do the wishbone! I won! Maybe my wish will come true?

This is just a classic picture! A man with his guitar!

Well Thanksgiving came and went. We loved seeing both families! What a treat. We are really looking forward to Christmas where we get to go down to San Antonio! But before that we of course have more updates to do! Come back and see what we have been doing to keep ourselves busy in the month of December!

Children of Eden

This past weekend, we were able to go down to Provo to see the musical, Children of Eden! Margie's brother, Richie, is the STAGE MANAGER! Big time stuff going on here! Better than seeing the show, we were able to SIT in the box and listen to Richie make all the calls. It was so fun! It really brought a whole new light to putting on a show. The actors and actresses and NOT the only people involved here people! Which we knew, but this time we were able to see everyone else put their talents into action. Richie was so good. He gets nervous at some points, but hello, if it was me doing that...I would be NERVOUS ALL OF THE TIME!!!! We enjoyed the acting, the music and Richie doing what he does. The doctrinal correctness of the play is somewhat questionable. Don't worry, Richie would agree with us!

Thanks Rich, for letting us come and join in the FUN!
(He even let us put on some headsets and listen in...AWESOME!)

At one point when Richie said, "Lights, GO!" Which means for the lights to turn off or turn on or whatever they need to do at that moment, the light Richie was using went out as well! Perfect timing. Andrew was there able to save the day! He fixed the plug which is basically a fire hazard! It is a miracle we are here to talk about it today!

Richie workin' it! Did we mention he is also in charge of all the music too! He has to push the button that makes the music turn on! Honestly, that is PRESSURE people!

Margie tried to look as cool as Richie, but it didn't work out too well! We still had fun though!