Christmas!

Christmas 2007

Christmas has gotten a lot more fun with the addition of McKenzie in our lives. It's so exciting to see her experience the different elements of the season from the music, food, family and the presents! Last year's Christmas she was much more interested in the ribbons and wrapping than she was what was inside. This year she was a little more interested but clearly she was easily overwhelmed with multiple new things at once. She was able to open presents on her own but often became distracted before she got it open and wandered off to play with something else. Next year will be a whole different world.

Here's McKenzie at Christmas last year checking out some presents under the tree - it's amazing how much she has changed and learned in this past year.

Christmas 2008

We spent Christmas Eve at Aunt Kacey and Uncle Eric's house for a fantastic prime rib lunch then on to Matt's Uncle Dick and Aunt Gayle's house for a fun filled evening with the lots of extended family. Christmas morning we were at home and we opened our presents. Minus the 'big' gift for Matt and McKenzie which still has not arrived - stay tuned for a future post once that arrives! Then we headed out to Monroe and spent the rest of Christmas day at Grandma and Grandpa Z's house. We were beat when we came home and were happy to be home.

McKenzie got spoiled with fun gifts the highlight so far seems to be her new babies (twins!) and a mini stroller. She loves babies so much and just wants to 'help', I'm going to have my hands full when baby boy arrives in 32 days! She was very helpful with cousin Claire, always trying to give her a bottle and even tried to pick her up twice! We're going to have to really work on that once we bring the new baby home. Here's McKenzie helping Aunt Jennifer with Claire while we opened presents.


It snowed every day here through the 26th - while it was really nice to have a white Christmas it gets a little old trying to drive around in the snow. We were really happy to see some rain today which melted some of the snow but there's still a lot out there! Let's hope the weather continues to warm up.

Here's McKenzie on Christmas morning looking at her stocking - I love black and white pictures and the contrast that you can get in them. Picasa is such a great tool to work with photos in!


Hope everyone had as merry of a Christmas as we did!

Virtual Christmas!

Since the Northwest has turned into a 'Winter Wonderland' just in time to delay almost all our holiday packages we are celebrating Christmas minus some very important items we ordered online. In the spirit of the season I'm sitting up late on Christmas Eve printing out 'you would have gotten this...' letters to the family. The one gift I can deliver on that is delayed is the yearly addition of photo books featuring the grand kids that we've been making for the Grandparents.

Photoworks has a great feature where you can make your books and then without even purchasing them you can share them with people. Since the real copies didn't arrive I'm posting the links here for the Grandparents to check them out while they wait for their real copies!

Merry Christmas to all!!

Click Here for McKenzie and Claire

Click Here for McKenzie, Kayla and Nathan

Dreaming of a white Christmas...

What is this white stuff? This is not McKenzie's first snowfall, we had a couple of snowy days last year and then we took a trip over to visit Grandma and Grandpa C in Chelan where they had over three feet of snow! Last year McKenzie really didn't appreciate the snow since she wasn't even crawling at the time it wasn't that much fun. Here she is clearly having the time of her life riding in a sled - good thing we strapped her in since she couldn't even move in that snowsuit.


This year after some initial hesitation and a little frustration at the snow for getting onto her boots she has learned to love it. Thanks to Kayla and Nathan for showing her how much fun snow can be.

Behold Our Family Christmas Tree!

Clark: "The Griswold family Christmas tree."
Ellen: "Isn't it a little big?"
Clark: "It's not big. It's just full."
Russ: "Dad, that thing wouldn't fit in our yard."
Clark: "It's not going in our yard Russ. It's going in our living room."
~ National Lampoons Christmas Vacation

McKenzie 'helping' her Daddy cut down the tree! Not quite as big as the Griswold's tree but still huge!

We love to get our Christmas tree early in the season and enjoy it for as long as possible. This year we headed out after have a 'Thanksgiving brunch' on November 30th with Grandma and Grandpa Z, Uncle Chris, Aunt Jennifer, Aunt Anne, cousin Patti and cousin Claire. We met up with Aunt Kacey, Uncle Eric, and cousins Nathan and Kayla at the tree farm.

Two years ago we waited until two weekends after Thanksgiving to get our trees and we got turned away at our usual tree farm because they were out of trees. So we set out exploring for a new place to get a tree and stumbled across a new tree farm that was down by the river and had been flooded a bit with all the rains. The price was right but we all discovered our trees were two toned from the flood waters. This year we tried that tree farm again and were surprised at the size of the trees - no need to worry about two toned trees since we would all have to cut several feet off our trees to get them in our houses. We got a beautiful tree and had an adventure trying to get it to stand up in our tree stand because the trunk is very narrow but it looks great and McKenzie is enjoying looking at all the pretty lights and ornaments.


McKenzie loves to look at the pictures on a digital camera - unfortunately she doesn't always allow you to actually take a picture because she's too interested in looking at them!


The cousins scouting for trees...

Matt loading our trees onto the tractor bed - these things were huge!

Christmas Elves!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Grandma Hunter's Christmas Cake

This is my Great Grandma Hunter, she is my dad's mom's mom. She lived in Victoria located on Vancouver Island in British Columbia while my Grandma was growing up. After my Grandma passed away my Aunt Renee became the owner of many of Grandma Hunter's recipes along with many other priceless family heirlooms too numerous and 'valuable' to list. One of the recipes from Great Grandma Hunter's collections was for 'Christmas Cake' aka fruitcake to us Americans.

My Dad is a huge fruitcake lover - it's the thing he likes best about the holidays, perhaps the only thing he likes. We have always purchased him store bought fruitcake during the Christmas season and I can remember going up to Victoria as a kid and going into bakeries where they always seemed to have something similar to fruitcake available throughout the year.

Probably four or five years ago Aunt Renee asked me if I wanted to try making fruitcake with her for the holidays and of course I agreed. We have been making it ever since - each year is a new experiment and adventure. We took the original recipe which was written all in pounds and converted the things that needed to be converted into cups. Each year we are shocked by the pound of butter and the dozen eggs and then the many many types of strange candied fruit we add. It's amazing to think of Great Grandma Hunter making that recipe in an old fashioned kitchen.

This years fruitcake creating was no exception in terms of our shock at the bulk of ingredients we needed and the time it took to make the cakes. Each year we write down what we added the previous year, how long we baked them, how many the recipe made and the cost of our ingredients. We did have a special helper this year. McKenzie didn't join us last year for the fruitcake making she was home in bed but this year she was right there in the action - minus the two hour nap.

Here's the fruit for the fruitcake - a mixture of lots of raisins, currents, candies cherries, orange peel, lemon peel, slivered almonds, crushed pineapple and a whole lot of Brandy. This is only one batch - we made two!! I wonder what type of bowl Great Grandma Hunter had that held all this fruit.


Here's Aunt Renee with an even bigger bowl stirring the fruit mixture in with the batter!


McKenzie's helping Aunt Renee measure dry ingredients - such a good helper!

I wish I had a picture of the finished fruitcake - they turn out very pretty. We bake them into assorted sizes of decorative bundts. I'll have to take some pictures and add them to a later post if my Dad doesn't eat them all first!

People might dread receiving a fruit cake during the holidays but I think it's a great tradition and one that I look forward to continuing as long as I've got my Dad to eat the results : ) McKenzie also tried the fruitcake and thought it was pretty good!

Family Traditions!

Way back in the late 70's my Grandma 'Big E' started a family tradition of writing on a plain white table cloth after holiday meals and then having someone embroider in the messages. You can watch your hand grow over the years on the table cloth and remember back to different times in life when you start to look at the different areas of the table cloth. For some this is more painful than for others. You always have to think carefully about who you bring to Thanksgiving there are many who eat their dinner with a message from a past love interest staring back at them.

Since the extended family has grown from Grandma and Grandpa and their original five kids to include their spouses, ten grand kids and six great grand kids with another on the way we had to start a second table cloth back in 2000. This came about not just for the need for more room to write but also from the need of another table cloth to cover the table which this year fed 28 at Kacey's house.

I have always loved the table cloth and seeing all the different funny messages from people. Grandma 'Big E' originally sewed the table cloth but after she passed away my Aunt Wendy took over and she continued up until four years ago when I somehow became the one who sews in the designs. Aunt Wendy was so good that she used to sew all the Thanksgiving designs in before Christmas so we could write on it again. I don't have that kind of time or motivation so I pack the table cloth up after Thanksgiving after giving it a good shake to get off any extra turkey and stuffing and then I box it up until just after Halloween when I frantically pull it out and count the number of designs to be sewn in. I then calculate how many nights I need to work on it until Thanksgiving when I have to be finished. Each year I panic as the dates gets closer but I've always managed to finish at least in time to get it washed up for the big day.

Here's a picture of the new table cloth - just after I finished sewing it up.


A closer picture of some of the designs.


And here's the table at Kacey's set for 28 - the new table cloth is at one end then we have a filler table cloth and on to the older one.


If my house was to burn down one of the things I'd save after my family and dogs would be the table cloth. The memories shared by generations of family are not replaceable and I hope that McKenzie and her cousins and second cousins once removed can continue on this tradition for a long time to come!