Thurs. Dec. 20, 2012 - Blizzard!!!

Waiting in line to see Santa Claus

Ahh the memories

This was the best picture we could manage

 On Sunday we had Chad's group over for a holiday party; Chad smoked some amazing ribs

 It was also the Packers-Bears game

 Sadly, this isn't how the game went (for non-football readers, that is a Chicago Bear eating the Green Bay Packer quarterback Aaron Rodgers)

 Micaela loves emptying my cabinets and shaking everything; I hope I never forget to tighten a lid

 Riley is an excellent cookie decorator

 Our local post office has a special mailbox for Santa mail

 We went to the Oshkosh Celebration of Lights

 It was gorgeous!

 Micaela figured out how to stack pillows and climb onto the furniture and she is VERY proud of herself (unfortunately she also realized that standing on Seamus gives her enough boost to get up too, poor dog. We don't allow this but I'm sure we miss some incidents)

 We made cookies and caramels for Riley's preschool Christmas program and our neighbors; since the program was cancelled due to weather our neighbors got even bigger holiday bags

 This was the second time in 10 hours that Chad shoveled; a generous neighbor also came through with a snowblower earlier in the morning

It snowed and snowed and snowed (and is still snowing right now...and the wind is blowing)

What a welcome back to the Midwest, our first blizzard! Last year Appleton had a mild winter and we were hoping for a similar one this year to ease back into real winters. Guess not! The snow started last late last night and is still coming down. Chad shoveled twice and our very nice neighbor came over with his snowblower to clear us out after the snowplough pushed all the street snow into the base of our driveway. We are already rethinking our decision to not get a snowblower this year. All the local schools were cancelled which unfortunately meant Riley's Christmas program has been postponed. The teachers had prepared the preschoolers for this possibility so when I told Riley she couldn't go to school and perform she said, "Oh rats!" The girls and I just stayed in our cozy house decorating cookies and preparing holiday bags for our neighbors. I was asked to bring 2 dozen cookies to Riley's Christmas program so we added those to the cookies and caramels we made for the neighbors; I hope we haven't set expectations too high for next year! Riley wanted to get out in the snow so she and I delivered them in the blizzard. Our neighbors must definitely think we are that crazy family from California, as if there was any doubt.

We also visited Santa Claus this week. Riley was so excited and walked right up to him, got on his lap, and gave him her entire list (which thankfully hasn't changed so we are set for Christmas morning). Micaela was not as impressed. I knew we were in trouble when I had to peel her out of my arms to get her on his lap. We snapped a few pictures and I think those pretty well tell the story. Hopefully she'll do better next year.

Earlier this week we drove through Menominee Park in Oshkosh for the "Celebration of Lights." It was very pretty, I always love looking at lights. Even Micaela, who still hates the car, was quiet as we looked at all the trees and characters. Riley kept wanting to get out and walk around like we did last year at the Oakland Zoolights. Too cold!

The plus side of all this snow, at least we know we'll have a white Christmas!