BLIZZARD of 2010!

What a fierce storm we had between yesterday and today. It was the Blizzard of 2010 and it dumped approx 12.5" of snow here!
It started yesterday around 1:00 PM...
Looking out my front door!
Being that our tree stand ended up having a crack in it and our rug was all wet, I thought it was a perfect day to get the tree down. When it was standing there I realized that it would be such a waste to just throw the tree out. So I asked Scott what he thought of the idea of putting it in the garden to look pretty in the snow. Before I knew it, he grabbed it and started to go through the house with it!
He put it in the garden....

Notice the shorts and NO shoes!!!

Looking out my front window...

The next morning...

It was so windy last night (60-70MPH) that there were drifts all over the place.
across the street...
The stoop
I guess it's high time we got out to shovel!!!

Christmas Eve was a lot of fun. During the day, Scott and Alyssa made the dough for sugar cookies. They totally got into the festive mood with aprons and hats!

We went to EAB Plaza for our annual Christmas Eve picture. Brooke and Chris aren't here this year. We've added Dave to the pictures!
Alyssa and Dave
Alyssa and Scott
PJ, Me, Dave, Alyssa and Scott
PJ and I
After we left EAB Plaza, we drove home slowly to look at Christmas lights. We always stop at one of Scott's friends house to see the monstrosity. You can barely see the house. There's hundreds of those ugly blow up decorations on every inch of their lawn!

We ended the night with a nice dinner!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

PJ and I were woken up by Scott and Alyssa at 8 singing some religious song!
We had MANY laughs and good times as we opened our gifts.
Every year, Scott gets PJ under ware that is just sooooo NOT PJ. This year was no exception!

another funny from Scott... "Who ever hits the cat first, WINS"!

and yet another funny. This one is from Brooke. It's dryer lint in a zip lock bag! She had it amongst the presents in the box she sent to us. Brooke and Alyssa used to leave me piles of lint on top of the dryer until I got on their case to throw it out. Then I found a HUGE blob of it on the kitchen table with a noite about sheering sheep. I scrapbooked that note and lint years ago. So now I get this package of lint, thinking Brooke is so clever... so I thought!

Huckleberry enjoying the paper
Alyssa was going through her stocking and found what else but a ziplock bag of dryer lint that I had put there!! Amazing that Brooke and I were thinking the same this year!
Alyssa and Scott both texted Brooke to say how funny it was that we both thought of the joke with the dryer lint. Here's how the text's went....
Alyssa: Not only did u give Mom lint, but I got a bag of it in my stocking LOL!
Brooke: HAHAHA! The lint was for packing purposes! It wasn't a present for Mom HAHA but I guess we can pretend! LOL She'll probably scrapbook it!
Alyssa: What are you a dope? Who packs presents with lint? Did you honestly think a bag that small would keep everything safe?
And so it went....
Some of things that were put in their stockings were dollar store kids toys etc. They were such a hit!!! Later in the day, they, including Dave, had fun watching little pellets turn into dinosaur sponges!

This is Scott's crystal growing tree. Within an hour it had crystals on it!
By morning, it was beautiful!
This was a very quiet yet fun Christmas. The Dollar Store items were such a big hit that Scott and Alyssa proposed trying something new for Christmas next year.... Let's have a Dollar Store/Garage Sale Christmas. They both said that they don't need or really want anything so this could be fun. They want to have a dollar amount, like $30, and 1/2 goes to items from the
$ store and 1/2 is from garage sales. They were totally serious! As crazy as it is, I think it could be a lot of fun!!!

Scott bought tickets for PJ, Alyssa, me and himself to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra as Christmas presents.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CCSeugClR8&feature=related
We had always heard that the concerts were great but really didn't know what to expect. I never expected them to be 'rockers' and so talented!
They started by coming down from the ceiling.

One of the first things we all noticed is that they ALL were very talented in shaking their heads back and forth to make their hair fly. It was so funny!

The first half was like a Christmas rock opera. A man told a Christmas story in segments leading to the orchestra playing different Christmas songs in their way.
Besides being talented musically, they were also very talented in theatrics. Their songs were stories and they played the parts very well.
They had singers and members of the NY Philharmonic as their orchestra.
The second half was a variety of their regular songs. It was funny because some songs I guess had certain meanings to the audience because they would do hand movements, stand up at certain times etc. It was like being at a YES concert!
There goes the hair again!
The violinist was mine and Alyssa's favorite member. He took command of that stage and was amazing to watch.

When he was leaning backwards, PJ said that there was water coming out of the top of the bow. We had to explain to him that it wasn't water that he was seeing, it was violin strings! You can't see it in this picture though. It was pretty funny!




This was the strangest concert that I've ever been to! It was just so funny to see a bunch of long haired, crazy energetic guys turn ordinary songs into works of art. It was like Beethoven meets Kiss! They were all very talented in their individual ways. I thoroughly enjoyed myself!

We had lots of laughs decorating the tree. Dave joined us and it was his first experience decorating a tree.

Alyssa and Dave are trying to figure out what the heck that ornament is of. It was one of Nanny and Pop's ornaments.
Huck sitting on the end table watching all the action
This will become a family tradition. As Alyssa, Scott and Dave decorated the tree, PJ read the Cajun Twas The Night Before Christmas off of an ornament that we bought for Scott while we were in New Orleans.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_prlqOyEXyY
It was so funny because PJ has not mastered the Cajun accent yet. It was hysterical watching him try to read the words because they are written as they're supposed to sound.
Alyssa, Dave and Scott got quite a kick out of it!
When the kids were young, the 'Ornament Fairy' would come at night and move some ornaments from the bottom of the tree, upwards to even it all out. Now that they've grown, I think the Ornament Fairy has to come back and move some to the bottom!
We had a great time together!