Day 4- The Louvre take 2

We took a leisurely approach to our 4th day in Paris.

Because we get in free to the Museums we decided to go back to the Louvre and do another wing. FYI you are not going to see everything in the Louvre unless you spend at least a week there, get on line and pick out the things that you must see go to those and then enjoy the things you see on the way!

We learned that the Louvre is built inside a castle and some of the footings are still there.

I could have stayed in the basement all day. Paris doesn't believe in air conditioning, apparently it is hot for 2 weeks out of the year... we were there for one of those weeks.

We got to see this pyramid, which is not under this one(like I thought it was)

After the Louvre we took a walk down the gardens and attempted to visit Les Petite Palace but it was about to close so we put it on the plans for the next day.

We ordered sushi from a place just down from our apartment, put on Gladiator(one of the few English DVD's there) opened the balcony doors and prayed for a breeze to cool the place off before bed.

Day 3- Bastille Day

So we were in New York for the 4th of July and we ended up being in Paris for Bastille Day (their version of the 4th of July)

Going through Les Invalides and seeing WWII from a different perspective.

Getting stuck behind the gates at Les Invalides while the military has their parade. And Matt getting excited about all the helicopters.

We met my Uncle, who lives in Paris, and his friends for dinner. Dinner's in Paris are the event of the evening and take hours. Unlike here where we go to dinner before the event.

Seeing fireworks being shot off of the Eiffel Tower

Day-2 Disneyland Paris

After Crystal speaks Franglish with a metro worker we figure out how to get into the "accessible" station

Upon arriving at Disneyland, we learn that we must go stand in a separate line to purchase our tickets. An hour later we make it to the window where Matt is asked for his invalid card. Seeing as the US has the whole ADA don't want to discriminate so we don't make you have a special card stating that you are an invalid ( Thanks Frenchies!) we explain that we have a Dr's note and Matt's drivers license which according to the website is all we need.

15 min later Matt receives his 1/2 price ticket and Crystal gets in for free( I know the forbidden word of Disney)

Almost 2 hours late our friend is panicked that our train from Paris has jumped the tracks and we are laying in a hospital somewhere. Relieved to see each other we embrace and find some food.

The coolness that is Disneyland (in Anaheim) has not translated to the EuroDisney...but it's still cool.

A 4 course French meal served by Cinderella's mice (the princess dinner/lunch is a must for all with wee one of the female variety) Check out how fancy the dessert was :

Day-1

The Louvre:

Watched a sparrow outsmart the pigeons while waiting for friends to arrive.

"Enjoying" the experince of having 1/2 of our group evacuated from the room they were left in because of a suspicious package and explaining to the guard that we don't want to go into the room we just want to know where our family is!

Matt gets to go infront of the velvet ropes ( along with our friends wee ones) to see this :

But being more impressed with this:

Ahhh Paris

If you ever make it to Paris there are a few must sees. We were there for a week and after talking with my Uncle (who lives there) he agreed that we had seen the majority of sites.

We stayed for a week and rented an apartment. To play catch up ( we have been home for almost 5 months now...) I'll be doing a quick Highlight post with a few pictures for each day ;)

But our bags won't be on the next flight!! And where is Matt's chair?

As with every trip we've ever taken there is at least one thing that makes us scratch our heads with wonderment until they bleed. This time we got to do it in a foreign language!

We had a layover in Paris on our way to Munich from London. Because we decided to do Germany on our own dime the flight from Paris to Munich was booked at a different time then the rest of the flights, it was also on a totally different itinerary. We did not think this would be a problem, as we had over 2 hours between the flights to gather our luggage and check back in, but the gods of chaos had a different plan in mind for us.

Upon arriving at Charles De Gaulle we were met by "Johnny the wonder kid" he speaks very little English, and I speak just enough French to get us to the restroom and ask for a potato. We try to explain to him that we need to get our luggage, and find Matt's chair, to this day we have not figured out why the chair must be checked luggage in France. After running around a bit we find the chair and Matt is overjoyed to leave the tiny aisle chair ( that is skinny enough to get down the aisle in a plane). Now off to find our luggage.

Everyone we talk to continues to assure us that our luggage will be booked onto the next flight,that is all fine and dandy if our luggage had been checked through to Munich, but as the next flight is on a different itinerary the luggage is not going to be on the next flight. After explaining this in franglish to about 10 different people, we finally chat with someone who speaks English better then we do and they provide us with 3 different spots that our luggage could be.

Luggage found(after Johnny tries to get us through spaces that no one should be able to fit through) we head off to get our tickets. No one can find our reservation and we head off to customer service,apparently in the booking process our names have been flipped and we are now lastname firstname.

Johnny now informs us that we need to get to the other terminal and goes off to search for his supervisor so he can call for the wheelchair transportation. We bid good day to Johnny and pray that we can get on the plane with tickets that have different names then our passports.

Upon arriving at the other terminal we are introduced to Sulomon who will be taking care of us from now on. Joy of joys, he speaks English and we are able to explain our ticket situation. After a few minuets at customer service we head off to check in our luggage. Here we begin to realize just how foreign a manual wheelchair is, as Matt is asked time and again about the battery pack on his chair when he informs the agents that he will be staying in his chair until it is time to board the plane. After numerous calls to several people it is decided that Matt can in fact stay in his chair ( and we begin to really miss the ADA in the great old USA).

The chaos gods are not done with us, and it looks like they may actually win this battle as we wait for another transporter to take us to the plane( which is not at the gate, but is at another gate in the terminal we had left Johnny in) For some reason we are boarded onto the back of the plane after every one else is on, which infuriates the other passenger in a wheelchair, if we had known this we would not have requested to be moved to the front of the plane for ease of boarding.

Finally buckled in the plane takes off 20 min late, but the food was surprisingly yummy!

I heart Germany

A List of the things I heart most about Germany:

Taxi's that are brand new Jaguars

Big German waitresses who won't let us order our own food, and scoff at the fact that we order coke in a brew house

Stores that makes us worry about where we are staying, but turn out to be like Ikea ----->

Learning that brats should be served on baguettes

Weibserwurst, if anyone knows where we can get some of this you would make our day!

Chocolate, the good kind, not the stuff we try to pass off as chocolate here in the states(sorry Hersey's)

Women taxi drivers who can't get out of town because of the gay pride parade, and spout off all the German I know(and I don't know the good words)

The View, I would be happy living here...apparently Hitler wasn't, but I'm betting the fact that he didn't eat meat and was probably hungry had a bit to do with it

Surely it never rains in London

London had a long hot spell this summer, right before we left in fact, so why on earth would I think to pack an umbrella? Our second day in London was definitely one of those, if I had packed it we wouldn't have needed it, but since I didn't, we did kind of days.

We thought about getting up early to see the changing of the guard, and decided to put it on our list to do next time.

While admiring the outside of Westminster Abbey one of the tour guides told us that we could go in for free. There are a lot of people that are buried there that I didn't know about, Handle, Darwin and Sir Issac Newton. My (I'm not sure how many greats) grandma Mary Queen of Scotts is also buried there, so I went up to say hello and found out why I love canopy beds so much as she is buried under one.

The tube in London is undergoing renovations to become more wheelchair accessible. One of the few stations that is already accessible is near Westminster so we decided to take the tube out to the Tower of London. Well I read the map wrong and the station that is at the Tower of London connects to an accessible side station...by stairs. So we got back on the tube ( we had learned that all day passes serve us best from our days in DC) and headed over to Kings Cross ( of Harry Potter fame) to transfer to a different line. However when we got there the lifts were out so we headed back to Westminster and got on a different line. While having our adventure underground the skies opened up.

We walked through the rain a bit until we got to a restaurant to eat while we waited for the rain to let up a bit, it didn't. So we decided to go for it, we walked across the Tower Bridge and over to the Tower of London. The Tower of London isn't totally accessible, something about it being really old, there were a few things that we could see, luckily one of them was the crown jewels, unfortunately they don't let camera's in, but there is some cool stuff in there! There is also a remnant of an ancient Roman city wall, it was built in the late 2nd or early 3rd century

Once we were done there we headed back, in our ponchos that a nice lady gave us, to take a ride on the London Eye. Now for those of you who know me I am not a big fan of heights, last year at Disneyland while on the Ferris wheel wee one had to console me. There are no restraints on this, you are in a glass capsule that rotates as the wheel goes around. I hear the view is great, I stayed in the middle clamped to the bench, Matt took pictures. (video to come)

Across the pond

We took the nigh time flight from New York to London, mostly so I could "sleep" as we flew over the ocean. I don't like driving over water, let alone flying over it. Matt said it was a good thing I was sleeping because as we approached Heathrow Airport he watched a big plane fly over us.

Going through customs was interesting, as we waited our turn we watched as a lady had her story torn apart, luckily our story was easy, 3 days for site seeing, and can you recommend the best place for fish and chips?

London is frantically getting ready for the Olympics in 2012, which turned out great for us because they are getting everything wheelchair friendly. All of the new taxis are wheelchair accessible,they look like bowler hats .

We arrived at our hotel, praying that they would have a room that was available for early check in, we only had to wait about 20 min. After we freshened up we went out to explore London.

Our hotel was right off of Picadilly Circus, and within walking distance of most of the sites.

This is the hotel we originally picked out, but Marriott didn't want to play nice. It's the old Parliament building. The big ferris wheel thing is called the London Eye, and yes we went on it ( pictures in the next post).

We were so tired that we just walked around and planed out the next day. We walked across the pedestrian bridge ( the one that gets taken out in Harry Potter) just to realize that there is only an elevator at one end so we walked back.

We had asked the concierge at the hotel where the best fish and chips could be found, well we apparently didn't listen very well and got lost on our way to find it. We found a pub and as we have learned over the years, if you want really good food, find a pub! We ordered the variety plate and some cokes, and realized that the cokes on this trip were going to be few and far between, and that we would come to miss refills.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel to take a quick nap before heading back out. 2 hours later we went and found McDonalds. We just had to try it to see if it was the same as back home.

The burgers are better, but alas the fries are not.

3 hour tour

The best way to see Manhattan when you have very few hours in which to "see" Manhattan is a river cruise. You get to see the majority of the sites and you get to do it sitting down ( although Matt always does his site seeing sitting down...)

We opted for the 3 hour tour that takes you all the way around the island, and we had just enough time to head down in the morning take the tour and head to the airport.

Here are some of the highlights

Many a person learned what bird strike is when a plane landed on the Hudson River a few months before we went to New York. Although us Eddie Izzard fans have known for a long time what bird strike is.

The boat we were on was one of the first boats to reach the plane. They were backing out to start the tour when the plane landed. Here is a picture of where it landed.

This is Pier 54, where the Titanic would have docked if she had made it to New York, the pier is said to be haunted

This is the very first cell phone tower, the town of Hoboken NJ has a cool history, the first cell phone call, the first documented baseball game, and the oreo cookie just to name a few.













Ellis Island, it's alot bigger and nicer then I thought it would be. It's crazy to imagine the
amount of people who went through here, after leaving so much behind praying to find a better life.










We didn't have enough time this trip to go to Liberty Island, but you get an awesome view on the island tour. The crown had just reopened the day before, it had been closed since September 11th.

The United Nations building was built with windows on both sides to depict the transparity that they wanted to have

Not exactly the best place to advertise for the best locations and lowest prices on hotels. I would not want to stay there!

The House that Ruth built, in all it's glory... before they tear it down.

And the very best tidbit of information I learned on the 3 hour tour was about the Intrepid. This loverly Aircraft Carrier from WWII was built in 5 months by women. It takes the boys almost 5 years to build one now.

Fireworks

We were lucky enough to be on the 28th floor of our hotel that over looked the Hudson River. They moved the fireworks over to the Hudson this year because it's the 400th anniversy of when Hudson showed up to check things out, really I think they realized they could get more people to the show ( New Jersey) if they did it from the Hudson and not the East river.


We were able to see part of the show from our hotel room, which was better then sitting in the crowd of 2 million ( that's what they estimated ). Please enjoy a part of the show!

Take me out to the ball game...

5 years ago one of Matt's long time dreams was realized when he got Yankee's tickets for Christmas, 2 months later we got a call about wee one, and the tickets were given to his boss when we moved back home.

When we were planning out trip we realized that the flights would work better if we had a stop over in New York. As luck would have it the Yankee's were playing at home on the 4Th of July, and really what's more American then spending the 4Th of July at a baseball game?

The "easiest" way to get to the stadium from our hotel was to take the subway, and the subway in NY is accessible as long as you know where to find the hidden elevators. Once we had discovered the one by our hotel ( it was in the bus terminal) we asked one of the attendants the best way to get to the stadium. As she was telling us to go out to Jesery and back some nice gentleman said " Follow us, we are going to the stadium"

Now there are some rules that must be adhered to when you attend a baseball game. You must eat a hot dog, peanuts and smile as you pay $8 for the coke, $10 if you want the cool cup. 2 hot dogs, a sprite and coke ( both in the cool cups) and a bag of peanuts later we watched as the game goes into extra innings. Praying that we would not lose to a Canadian team on the 4Th of July the Yankee's win it in the bottom of the 12Th.

A Wicked good time in New York

Our vacation o' vacations started out in New York City. We were unable to get tickets to Wicked when it came here, but fate smiled upon us,

Fate: " Why see it there when you can see it on Broadway for 1/4 of the price?

US: "Good point, we shall see it on Broadway"

Landing at JFK was a lot of fun , in fact we prayed that it would be the most "fun" we would have on the trip(alas it was not, stay tuned). For some reason JFK thinks it is a good idea to land planes not by a gate, but out on the tarmac and bring people movers to take you to a gate. We were one of the few lucky ones that got a people mover sans stairs.

We got to our hotel with enough time to freshen up and head off to find something to eat before the show. There is a loverly place called Natsumi right across the street from the Gershwin Theater. We ordered the managers special, a plate as big as the table full of sushi, we highly recommend it.

Now we didn't know a lot about Wicked, we just knew it was the story of the Wicked Witch. We laughed so hard at some points that we are going to have to go see it again so we can hear the things we missed.

3 more sleeps.....

And we will be on our big big vacation, as wee one calls it. I'll try to update our blog while we are gone with pictures and such!

10 years ago... In a place not so far away

We said I do.

Over the years we've had a lot of fun, here are some of the highlights.

- Having an APB issued when we were "kidnapped".

- Matt driving to Beaver to pick up Crystal after she killed her first deer... with her car.

- Matt proposing after Crystal ruins it by telling him " Propose all ready"

-Crystal standing in the bride's room freezing while her mom and soon to be mom decide who is going to help her with what.

- Matt not sleeping for the first 2 weeks of being married because Crystal can't hold still when she sleeps.

- Matt shoving Crystal off the bed one night because she can't hold still when she sleeps.

-Crystal learning that Matt always wins while he sprays her with a water gun filled with water from the fridge.

-Mexi feast and poker nights with the Flans.

- Having our garage turned orange from painting signs when Matt ran for student body president.

- Packing the car to the brim with a spot for Lolly the crab, and moving to Virgina with jobs but no place to stay.

- Living in an apartment that everyone must have so they can enjoy the loveliness that is all other apartments.

- Pho. Where we become regulars to the point that they don't even take our order anymore.

-Trips to North Carolina.

-Theme parks, lots and lots of theme parks.

-Rain storms with green skies that freaked Crystal out, and Matt loved.

-Yankee's tickets that we didn't get to use.

-Getting a call one night in February, 5 weeks later calling family about wee one.

-Driving through an ice storm behind a toxic waste truck.

- 2 long days waiting for wee one to be released from the hospital.

- Spending a week with Grandma and Grandpa Hatch.

- Packing everything we own into a truck, shipping the cars and moving back home with no jobs and moving in with Mom and Dad, so wee one can grow up around family.

-Taking wee one to the temple to be sealed in the same room we got married 6 years before, and her screaming the entire time.

- Living close enough to not take potty breaks on the way to family events.

- Moving into our first home and making a list of projects, when we bought a brand new one so we wouldn't have projects.

-Planning a once in a lifetime trip that just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

- Falling in love over and over

What's more american? Apple pie or

Being at a Yankee's game on the 4th of July?











I'm going to say Yankee's game on the 4th of July, but mostly because we're going to be there!!!



After calling and chatting at just about everyone at Yankee's stadium and Ticketmaster trying to get tickets over the phone, I was not thrilled with their options of getting tickets, come on down to the box office or send in a request and hopefully there will be some tickets available when we get to it. Although I did send off a letter and found a couple of people who were willing to head on down to the box office and purchase the tickets for us.



Every morning I go through the ritual of attempting to purchase tickets that may have become available, apparently some tickets are held back and released slowly but had come up empty handed every time until today...



I start the morning off with the above mentioned ritual, but this time instead of the loverly page that says no tickets available the long awaited page with the seating chart appears!!! Hurray I run to grab my wallet, come back and realize that the tickets are $400 a pop. Now I love the Yankee's but I'm not sure I $800 love the Yankee's.



I call Ticketmaster, and chat with the lovely Heather. Heather can see some great tickets ($55) but can't quite select them, so she places me on hold and runs off to find her supervisor to see if he can get the tickets. I'm shaking, not sure if it is from the excitement that I am so close to getting tickets or the post workout I'm starving, and need to pee but can't do anything about it cuz I'm on hold shaking.



10 min later, with some brief interruptions from Heather apologizing that they are really busy but her supervisor is aware of the situation and is coming. A very sad Heather gets back on the line to inform me that the reason she can't grab the tickets is that there is no companion seat for me ( heck I'll stand just get us in the stadium!!) I accept her apology and go to plan b.



Plan b was concocted whilst the 10 min wait was happening: Perusing stub hub ( the place where people with extra tickets sell them to people like me who want tickets, it's endorsed by the Yankee's you can get there from their website... true story) I see what maybe accessible tickets... but wait can my eyes be deceiving me? I press the more info button. The description reads: ada seats, with extra leg room and comfy chairs available to all but can be used by disabled patrons. The tickets are only $10 more then the Ticket master ones I'm waiting for. I use the 3-d seat locater to see what my view will be. Not bad, not close enough to see facial expressions, but close enough to make out the pinstrips.



And so after calling and checking for at least a week I am overjoyed to announce that we will be sitting in Yankee stadium on the 4th of July... and I can finally go potty

Pass it on...

Here is the deal:

The first five people to comment on this post will get something made by me.
My choice. For you.

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:
-I make no guarantees that you will like what I make.
-What I make will be just for you.
-It'll be done this year.
-You have no clue what it's going to be.
-It may be a story. No guarantees, I may sew or stitch or bake something.
-Who knows? Not you, that's for sure!
-I reserve the right to do whatever I want!

The catch? Oh, the catch is that you must re-post this on your own blog and offer the same deal to 5 of your own lucky blog readers.So, the first 5 people to leave a comment telling me they are in, win a homemade gift by me!Be sure to post a picture of what you win when you get it.

The birthday gauntlet contiunes

From the end of February to the middle of June we have 13 birthday's. This does not include the celebrations of Happy gottcha day ( the day we finalized wee ones adoption) ,our Anniversary ( yea for 10 years) or friends birthdays.

Whilst perusing a friends book on cakes for kids I ran across a sea monster cake. I thought to myself "We need a boy so I can make this cake!" Good thing we have a nephew who is currently in love with monsters. So I volunteered to make the sea monster cake.

I was not impressed with the way the head of the monster was decorated in the book, so I tried my hand at sculpting the cake a bit. I have watched many an Ace of Cakes episode and felt comfortable in the small amount of sculpting that I would need to do.

And so without further adu I present Nessie the sea monster

It's always fun to get all the kids together. The youngest three tend to be matches and gasoline, who is who depends on the day. They were sitting by the fireplace when inspiration struck and I thought, you know what would be funny....

March Madness... not the basketball kind

So March has been a bit crazy in our house, and it's only 1/2 way over!!

I celebrated my 30th birthday for about a week. Grandma and Grandpa took wee one over night so we could have a date. We got our fingerprints done, went to Iggy's ( I must learn what is in that yummy orange sauce) and saw Taken ( good movie, although wee one is never going anywhere when she is a teenager). A couple of days later my sister cashed in one of her Christmas presents and cooked dinner for the whole family at Bennihanas, she learned how to make the volcano and everything. That weekend we dropped wee one off again and headed to the melting pot with some friends. Soooo yummy, although I think they should offer a 4 course desert menu.

The following week the deliveries started, we had a new poofy couch delivered a few weeks before. Monday wee ones big girl bedroom set came and we said goodbye to the mermaid bed. Tuesday Matt's computer stuff started being delivered, the UPS guy was very jealous that Matt was building a new computer. Wednesday the freezer came, the delivery guy literally skipped back to the truck when I told him I wanted it in the garage and not the basement, now to start filling it.

This past weekend wee one turned 4. She has informed me that since she is 4 she can do pretty much everything on her own now, but I make the food much better then she can, so she's ok if I want to keep making the food.

Yesterday we had both families over to celebrate wee one's birthday, and since we had not been able to get together for mine and my sister in law's birthday we sang to us as well.

Every year I try my hand at a new cake, this year was flower cupcakes and a basket weave on the layer cake.

Sunsets, birds and snowstorms

One of the joys of living out in the middle of nowhere, well almost the middle of nowhere, Walmart is coming February 2009, or so the sign says but another sign has said "Betos Coming soon" and it hasn't come yet, but I digress.


Anywho one of the joys of living out here is that we get some really great outdoorsey pictures. Here are a few of my favorites.






Sunset a couple of weeks ago :

Blue Herons behind the house:

Our first big snowstorm, it was only supposed to be a dusting but we got about a foot, you can see the top of the fire hydrant just peeking out of the snow.

2008 year in review

Every year around Christmas time I think to myself " We should do a Christmas card this year and let our friends and family know how our year was" And then everything starts to become a blur and next thing I know it's the middle of January! So I thought that I would combine one of my resolutions ( to keep a better blog) with the desire to let people know how our year went.

So I present to you a month by month play of 2008 for the Crippled Avengers

January:

We started the year off with a bang. Crystal got a double kidney infection, then Matt got a kidney infection and not to be out done Wee one got a double ear infection. Oh and we got our 1st official family picture. We should really order a copy of that...

February:

The great snowstorm!!! For those of you who live by us you'll remember the loverly storm that came and closed the main freeway here. This stranded Matt at work until 2 am, and made it impossible for Crystal to get to work. This storm propted Crystal's boss to allow her to work from home. The end of the month starts the Birthday guantlet, birthdays at least everyother week, some times multiple birthdays in the same week. The guntlet runs until the begining of May.

March:

Birthdays!!! Crystal and Wee one are both born in this month, smack in the middle of the gauntlet. This year Wee one decided that she must have a Little Einsteins cake. Crystal searched high and low but alas Disney had not yet started to capitalize on the Little Einsteins market, so she had to improvise. Wee one also convinced Matt to attended Princesses on ice.

April:

Matt turned 30. Matt and Crystal celebrated by going to Benihanna's with some friends. Wee one celebrated by giving Matt his presents as soon as she woke up. The presents were not wrapped yet and Crystal learned that she needs to find a better hiding place for gifts.

May:

Matt and Crystal celebrate their 9th anniversary by dropping off wee one to the grandparents and going to their new favorite spot, Marriott Summit Watch in Park City. It's very nice since the off season for them is the summer. The room has a big king size bed, a kitchen, and a 2 person jetted tub. And this tub is the way all 2 person jetted tubs should be set up, side by side, that way you don't have your loved ones feet in your face.

June:

We go to the annual family reunion, wee one gets her very first sleeping bag. Said sleeping bag was supposed to be green ( as per Matt's request) but wee one vetoed him and wanted a purple one. Crystal's mom then makes the mistake of telling wee one over lunch that she is going to go see the princesses. Wee one decided that we must go too!!! And so we take an impromptu vacation, crashing Crystal's parents vacation. Wee one got to see the ocean for the first time, and was not impressed with going into the ocean. Wee one meets her favorite princess, and is rendered speechless, Crystal also meets her favorite princess and while not rendered speechless is very excited.

July:

The vacations continue, we were home for a couple of weeks before we headed off to Yellowstone to spend sometime with family. We went to a rodeo, while there wee one insisted on letting everyone know when the horses were doing their business. We saw the big sprinkler aka Old Faithful, who by the way was almost 30 min late! Ate ice cream, and feed bread to the fishes. It was a great relaxing vacation.

August:

We finally jump into the official house hunting waters. The one we actually want to see is under contract, so we are shown another rambler a street over, and fall in love.

September:

We do the offer, counter-offer dance and finally settle. We sign our lives away for the next 30 years, promise not to make illegal substances in our home, purchase a washer, dryer, fridge and say goodbye to apartment life.

October:

Boxes still littering the house, Matt heads off for a guys weekend of hunting. Matt gets his first deer and Crystal learns how to butcher a deer, all parts that resemble a deer were removed before it came into Crystal's presence. We now have steak, jerky, and bottled Bambi... yummy!

November:

Thinking that we finally have a place big enough to entertain, we have both families over for Thanksgiving, 17 grownups, 6 kids, and lots o' food. It was surprisingly uncrowded as we were able to put the tables end to end in the front room and dining room leaving the kitchen for serving. We also make the annual gingerbread house.

December:

The saddest and happiest month this year. The beginning brought the passing of Matt's Grandmother, whom we love and miss, but know that she is with Grandpa.

The end brought the annual holiday party for Matt's work. We got gussied up, dropped wee one off for a sleepover and shopping with grandma and grandpa, and went to watch other people win cool prizes. It seemed to be the year for Matt's department as name after name was drawn. Then it comes time for the grand prize: A trip for 2 including airfare, 4 nights hotel and spending money to anywhere in the world. They ask everyone whose name starts with a M to stand up. Matt raises his hand just excited to be so close to finally winning. Then they ask those whose last names starts with a G to stay standing. Matt slowly goes into shock as he can't see anyone else standing. Then they call Matt's name, Crystal had to tell him "They just called your name" because he was in such shock. After not winning anything after 7 parties he wins the grand prize.

2009 looks to be a good year, with our 10 year anniversery and a very nice vacation.