Christmas with the Petersons

After the Christmas Eve service, at Saint James the Less church, it was off to a family friend’s house for the annual Christmas Eve feast. Micah’s whole family was there to indulge in the delicious food that had been prepared. We enjoyed a wonderful spread of chips, dip, shrimp, bacon wrapped water chestnuts, meat pies, salads, meat balls and to end it all off was the Christmas log! I had never tasted a Christmas log until I enjoyed my first Christmas meal with the Peterson 3 years ago. It was a tradition that was brought to the Peterson by Micah’s sister-in-law Deja. The log is made from Chocolate graham cookies and whipped cream. Let me tell you…it is sooo yummy! Deja being every creative made the log into the shape of a Christmas tree, complete with a star on top!











We woke up Christmas morning to a dark sky outside and a dimly lit living room at the Peterson house. Micah’s brother, Josh, soon arrived with his wife Deja and three children, who had already been up for a little while and were ready to dig into the pile of presents that were under Nanny and Papa’s tree. Before we dug into the pile of presents we sat in the living room to sing Christmas carols and listen to the story of Jesus’ birth read from the gospel of Luke.











It was a fun morning as we watched Jonah and Emma open their gifts. I was every blessed to be able to participate in a large family Christmas this year. Coming from a family of just me, mom and dad it was a lot different to be with 13 people on Christmas morning. After all the presents had been open it wasn’t long before all the children, yes this includes Micah and Weiwei, were gathered around one of Jonah’s toys. Dave and Rhonda had no idea that this cute little truck track would be as entertaining as it was. I think that every one played with it and the kids watched it for a couple hours that day.


While the boys where playing with the kids a big breakfast feast was being prepared in the kitchen. We enjoyed waffles with fruit and whipped cream, scrambled eggs, bacon, a sausage ring and homemade hot apple cider. When breakfast we completed Micah and I went for a little aerobic workout and walked to his cousins house to deliver their gifts. We did get to enjoy a small nap in the afternoon before heading down to “the building” for the Peterson/Jamer Christmas dinner. There were 32 people there to enjoy a huge Christmas feast of turkey, potatoes, squash, veggies, stuffing, rolls and of course GRAVY!!!!
















Feeling extremely stuffed from the evening we all decided to take it easy that night and enjoy a movie at Josh and Deja’s house. Little did we know that the DVD of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory comes complete with Oompa Loompa dance lessons! Yes you read that right….picture the scene of 11 adults at Josh and Deja’s house learning the Oompa Loompa dance filled with turkey dinner. It was an extremely fun Christmas day and I think that we might have found ourselves a new Christmas tradition..hahah….

Christmas with the Stewarts!

We had our Stewart Christmas celebration on December 24^th. Mom woke up bright and early Christmas morning to start the preparations for our Christmas feast! I love waking up on Christmas morning to the smell of turkey in the oven. I couldn’t sleep anymore so finally I headed down stairs to help mom out. Once we had finished preparing cinnamon buns for breakfast, it was up the stairs to wake up the boys.



























Micah and I were so blessed to get so many wonderful presents from my family! I was very excited to get a Swiffer Wet Jet for Christmas (yes…you can now tell that I am an old married women! ha-ha) and Micah was very happy to receive new "clickable", non-page-bleeding sharpe highlighters and a huge bag of homemade
beef jerky! Hoorah!!!


This is my dad and our dog Zack in their Christmas outfits!


After everything was opened we went outside to take advantage of the fresh snow fall. We decided to build a huge snow man, since the snow was prefect! Our snow man turned out to be about 7 ½ feet tall. Micah being very creative found some long grass (to make a mullet), rocks, branches and a little red hat for the snow man! I am sure that my parents really loved having a sight like this on their front yard!

We enjoyed a wonderful feast with many of my family members. As you can tell Micah was very tired from all the excitement of the day and ended up having a nap with Ella on the living room floor. After his nap time, it was off to Saint John for the Christmas Eve celebration at his church with his family!

Home for the Holidays!

I got to go home for Christmas break a bit earlier then Micah did. I was able to hitch a ride to Saint John with Micah’s parents on Dec. 19^th and spend a couple of days at the Petersons before traveling home to St. Stephen with my Dad. I had so much fun home with my mom! We did some Christmas shopping and baking. I also got to hang out with my two cousins (who are like sisters) and my nieces!
















Chloe and I spend a whole day together baking some Christmas goodies. She is a great cook and a wonderful help!


Micah and Weiwei came down Thursday night after they finished a long day of work! We spent Friday with my family again playing with Chloe (while Ella slept) and showing Carrie how to blog!














That night my family had a huge Chinese meal. We ordered out and got to eat out of the very cool take out boxes!

The men spent most of the night relaxing on the couch playing the guitars together, before settling down at the table to play dominoes with mom and I. We went to bed farley early that night because we were having Christmas the next morning.

Back to Work

Yes, Christmas season has come to an end for me (Micah). And what a Christmas it was! You can expect that when there is nothing on the blog for a while, we are busy, and when we are busy, we have lots to blog about when we get back!!! So let's start off with a simple picture. This is our apartment window. You may notice that there are Christmas lights and that Katie has hung these beautiful ornaments! They are my breakfast! hahaha. Katie cut up some of our oranges and apples and baked them to a crisp. They are very lovely as you can see and I felt it would be nice to show off my wife's creative decorating skills as we start off our Christmas blogging!

What's that? You say you are all Christmasted out? Nonsense, I still have plenty of Christmas cheer (about 10 pounds worth : ) and several chocolat peanut butter balls left. So stayed tuned everyone........we're back to work!

PS - For any picture fanatics, this picture was really pretty normal at first. It's taken with a 3 MPX camera with no focus technology. But thanks to Google, you can make crazy edits to pictures like a pro. Just google "picasa" and play around with it. This one is a black and white with a soft focus on the apple. My favorite button is "I'm feeling lucky". Fun stuff!!

Busy month!

December was very busy month! We had lots of preparing to do for our Christmas break. We did take some time out of our busy schedule to hang out with our friends Stephen and Maria. We taught them how to play Dutch Blitz! They both were very quick learners and we had a wonderful night.

The next morning it was off to Fredericton to attend a confirmation service. Micah’s good friend TC was being confirmed along with 12 other youth. The small church was packed with family and friends. After the service we headed over to the church hall to enjoy a small lunch. It was a lot of fun chatting with old friends!

Can I get Confirmation? I said, can I get a CONfirmation!!

We love the MacMullins!!

Me and Eli Chillin. Eli wanted to pose with a serious look........but I caught him smiling!! Word up Eli!

Laura came to visit!

I was so blessed this week to have my friend, Laura, come to Moncton for a visit. Laura and I became great friends at university. We were both in the same small program which allowed us to see each other more then once a day! This was our first visit together since the wedding so we had a lot of catching up to do. Laura arrived early in the morning with a box filled with goodies for Micah and I. We spent the morning drinking coffee, eating pumpkin muffins and looking at our wedding photos. Soon it was off to the mall to do some Christmas shopping. The mall of course was packed so we tried to make it has painless as possible! Then it was across the parking lot to Chapters. What I beautiful store that is. I spent my time reading a question/ answer book about the Chronicles of Narnia, well Laura finished up her Christmas shopping. Soon our bellies were rumbling so we decided to have lunch together. We went to Cora’s and enjoyed a wonderful omelet meal. We were both very sad to see the day had passed us by so fast, as it was now time for Laura to make her long journey back to John Ville. We must not wait that long to see each other again Laura!! Micah and I will come to the farm house for the next visit!

No More Freezer Space

Well Katie and I decided that we would introduce Weiwei to some special Christmas treats that we have been enjoying throughout our childhood. Katie and I have combined our family traditions to create one super tradition. It consists of Katie's beloved Moco Cake and my Peanut Butter Balls and Sugar Cookies, and our Noodle Doodles (Noodle Doodles are quickly becoming our favorite simply because it is so much fun to say........"Noodle Doodle", *chuckling to myself*).

Once we had the chocolate chips melted down, we all we a little stumped as to how we should cote the peanut butter balls. After calling mom, we found out that the best way to cover them is by using chop sticks!!! It makes way too much sense! Weiwei hauled out our plastic chop sticks and started coting like a pro. Here we thought we were going to teach Weiwei how to make Christmas treats and he was making peanut butter balls like he'd been doing it his whole life!













While Weiwei and I worked on the peanut butter balls and noodle doodles (hahaha, noodle doodle), Katie was hard at work on her moco cakes! So many peanuts....... It was so much fun. Near the end of our cooking, Weiwei and I noticed that some of the chocolate had started to harden around the ends of the chop sticks. We thought it was funny because we couldn't shake it off..................but we soon discovered that it wasn't chocolate at all!!! The chop sticks were melting!! After cooling them off in the water, they became hard again, but it was certainly an emotional experience!



After all the Christmas cooking was finished and the fridge was full.........











Weiwei had a little relaxing time in our new (old Peterson) chair!










We also taught Weiwei how to play Dutch Blitz so that he would be ready for the Peterson/Jamer madness as he will be joining joining us for Christmas. We're going to have Christmas at the Stewarts first, then on to the Petersons. I don't know if Weiwei knows what he is in for : )


Finally, we all got dressed up and headed off for the Whitehill Christmas Dinner Party. Katie looked super snazzy in her new dress pants, boots and her favorite plad jacket which she rocked all night : )

Blogging Etiquette

Well, we've noticed that a lot of people have started to blog in the past few weeks. We expect that many more of you you will be starting up blogs of your own in the new year and we thought we would share a couple tips that we have learned along the way......

1. DO NOT take pictures in stores - This little tip is from a recent incident (which actually inspired this entry) at the super store. Kate Phinney and I were having a blast playing playstation 2 with the eye toy. There is a TV screen and you try to pop bubbles and knock dancing fairies off of clouds (I don't know if you are suppose to knock them off........we seemed to be getting game over awefully fast) by waving your arms around and clapping while the video camera tracks your moves. To add to the halarity, you can see yourself on the screen. Now you can just picture people walking by and seeing two lunitics waving and clapping at a TV screen............ So we were going to take a picture...........guy comes out and says: "No pictures in the store". Makes sense right? You wouldn't want someone comming into your house, taking pictures and then posting them on the Internet without permission. So that is the first tip and you may have noticed that the costco entry is now gone.

2. ALWAYS ask for permission - You should always ask people that you are taking pictures of or writing about if they want to be on your blog. This is pretty common sense, but we have started to make a point of it.

3. NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER.......AND I MEAN EVER - blog about your work place. This is a no no no. There are stories of people getting fired, sued, you name it. The first Google employee to get fired was telling the world inside details about his company on his blog (he wasn't trying to, he just wasn't thinking). You may think that this is your personal journal, but it is not. If you need to vent, use paper! Most people sign a confidentiality agreement and stuff like that, so it is very very bad to take pictures, or write about your work.

Happing Blogging!

Cookie Party

Last night we hosted a cookie party! Now some of you are probably like: " A cookie party?? But don’t they live in a one bed room apartment…how did they have a party??" Well, I don’t really know how we did it, but we managed to squeeze everyone in for this wonderful night. Due to the Christmas spirit, the church
that we are attending is putting on a
production called the living nativity, so as young adults we decided to
bake and decorate cookies for the production.

I did the pre baking and then everyone who was over put their creativity to work and decorated all 100 cookies (give or take a few for the “oops it broke” excuse, which lead to the eating of the cookie). Of course a party just isn’t a party without an ice cream break, and since we had all kinds of cookie decorations, our bowls of ice cream were looking quite festive!

Tis the season......

FOR CHRISTMAS BAKING!!!

Since it became December 1^st this past week, I held Micah to a very big promise that he made me about a month ago. Yes…we got to watch ELF this weekend!!!

Weiwei came over for another eventful Friday as Micah and I tried our best to educate him on all the traditions of Christmas…what better way to do this then by watching Elf. After a delicious supper, a trip to the CRAZY store of Wal-mart and Chinese lessons we were snuggled up on the couch with a big bowl of popcorn and a warm cup of hot chocolate ready to watch our favorite Christmas classic.

Saturday morning it was up bright and early for us to enjoy a wonderful breakfast made by our friend Paul. In the afternoon Micah and I dug out all of our Christmas decorations (ok so there was like 5 things) and put them up around our apartment. We did however buy some pretty white Christmas lights that we strung up around our living room window. It looks pretty nice from the outside and makes the inside of the house have a warm cozy glow at night. A little later in the afternoon we had a visit from Dave and Rhonda, they were coming to spend the evening with us! They brought us the rest of the furniture that we had for our apartment and lots of ingredients to do Christmas cooking!!! We made lots of Christmas goodies marshmallow squares, noodle doodles and of course Christmas sugar cookies.

These however were not just your average Christmas sugar cookies these cookies were each decorated with creativity and care! After frosting almost 5 dozen cookies we decided it was time to play a friendly game of blitz before Dave and Rhonda had to go and greet a guest at the airport.

ARE YOU HUNGRY??

For the truth that is!

Micah and I have just set up a new blogspot called hungry for truth. This page is dedicated to the One and Only king of KINGS and lord of LORDS. We will be posting messages about what God has been doing in our lives. It will be things that God is teaching both of us through His living word, books and teachings we hear. Our King Jesus is AWESOME!!! So come and check out the transformation He is doing in our lives.

The Living Christmas Tree

This past Wednesday night Micah and I had the privilege of attending a production put on by the Moncton Wesleyan Church called the Living Christmas Tree. This production has been put on for the past 33 years with new high tech improves being made as we moved into the high-tech age. The church was packed as many people watched the Christmas story come to live and told from a perspective that you may not have expected. The singing and acting was amazing during the first half and then when it was time for the second half the audience sat in amazement as the ginormous tree was lit and came to life. The production was wonderful beginning with the Christmas story and ending with the resurrection of Christ!! This is the season to celebrate our dear Saviors birth!!!