2009 – I can hardly believe it!

2008 was a good year for me – it was full of a lot of 1st’s – We celebrated our 1st anniversary!!! I went to Disney World for the 1st time, we hosted our 1st holiday family meal – and I cooked…. and well lots of other little things.

Tonight is our annual new years party – which I’m really excited about! What better way than to bring in the new year with family and friends. We are expecting about 15 people tonight. We will eat food, play games and of course socialize till the wee hours of the morning.

I’ve spent the day preparing dips and foods, and cleaning up getting games out, and finishing packing up some Christmas stuff – the tree is gone! Phil has been busy cleaning his office – and getting organized, so its been a busy but low-key day.

Normally our parties are pretty casual – but this year we though it would be fun to do it formal – but quickly realized that that is not very practical at all. So as a compromise – we are doing casual dressy — mainly jeans, black shirts, dress shirts – fun sparkly jewelry! I’m just about ready for the party – except I still have to make guacamole and chocolate fondue. But I’m getting pretty good at those things – so Its becoming more of a 2nd nature then a stress! yay!

Well…. we wish you all a Happy and safe New Year – and all the best in 2009!

Will be back tomorrow(ish) to post photos of the festivites!

We woke up this morning – and according to Phil it was chunks of snow falling from the sky not snowflakes — the truly were HUGE!!!

Lets recap a bit on a funny story — On Christmas eve, we came home from a wonderful service – Shannon and I were beautifully dressed… in dresses I might add. Anyway, we get home from the service, and decide to throw some snowballs at each other, which then turns to an attempt to give each other a facewash. So here we are standing on the edge of the front porch, scrambling to pick up snow and get each other… Phil sees this as an opportunity to run down the stairs and PUSH us into the snow — literally. We tumbled down the snow cover (deep snow, so it wasn’t dangerous) steps into the front yard, we managed to switch sides of which we started, and well the snow was EVERYWHERE (again we were in dresses) Phil was very proud of his achievement but little did he know we would not forget.

Today when saying good bye to some friends outside – Shannon and I attacked Phil (with 2 of us it is much easier). We carried him outside, gave him a huge facewash… but just then – he flips Shannon into the snow pile and they go at it…. snow fight for sure. I managed to slip away just quick enough to grab the camera and capture a few fine moments. It sure is a good example of brother-sister love between these 2…. this and gaming.

My joke lately – people say your marry someone like your mom/dad… well I married my someone just like my sister. Good thing I like her so much!

Here’s some pictures of the adventures…

Here is us on Christmas eve before heading off to our Christmas eve service!

Wishing you and your family a very Merry Christmas! We hope it is filled with many blessings, love and laughter.

Love, Phil and Keltie

Some photos of our evening — not too many, only because we were having to much fun with everyone to be taking pictures!

More photos of….
Tonight, when I came home from work — okay an hour after I came home from work — Phil came home with en ENORMOUS surprise!! I synthesizer!! Mom Schalm has been scheming with Phil for months apparently to do this… she researched keyboards, found one, and even found where it could be purchased close to here! And today was the day — so now, I’m rather excited that I will learn how to play piano — I can now without excuse. In the new year I’ll start learning cording!!! Yay!! This is a HUGE shout out to Mom Schalm – and a public THANK-YOU!! I am so happy!!

Last night was our 2nd annual Christmas party — and I must say is it was a raving hit!! We had about 25 people stop in through out the night, all sorts of food, and games and visiting and laughs… it was a perfect night.

Phil and I were in bed about 12:30 – so not too late – but warming us up for our 2nd annual New Years party!

Today I am at work – my last day until February as we’ve decided to close the studio until then due to understandable circumstances. It will be weird to not be working – but I have a whole list of projects to get done – so that will keep me busy.

While I am hard at work – Phil is off galavanting in Nanaimo today – he had some things he needed to do down there – so Jayme joined him to get some shopping done too.

Jason arrived today – so our Christmas clan is nearly here — Daddo arrives on Monday!! YAY!! I am missing him more this set out – and I get to pick him up from the airport which is fun too!!!

Our Christmas plans include: Chirstmas eve service at Crown Isle (ooo fancy), sleeping over and mom and dad’s – one present before bed – NEW PJ’s!, christmas morning – Eggs benny @ the Endalls (my favorite part), a Christmas nap, and then dinner time! I’m excited.

Its suppose to snow a bunch this week again too – which would be nice… my only hope is that it happens after dad gets home – so there is not flight delays… that would be sad.

I’ll be back later to post pictures of our party adventures from last night!

We have had some crazy weather lately – usually we get one big dump of snow a year – it melts – and that is it. This year is a little different!!! We have gotten lots of snow and it just stays – it hasn’t been raining much, and then it snows again. The forcast (which we all know will change daily, but still) calls for snow from the 21st – 30th which would be so fun!!! Anyway, here’s some pictures of our recent adventures!

On Sunday we headed down island for Christmas dinner with Tra and Wanda, it was wonderful!! The drive down was, well a little crazy, we actually think it may have been in our best interest to have not gone – but we made it and made it home, and all survived!! It took us like 2 hours to get there, and coming home on Monday morning took us nearly 1.5 hours.

And of course some photos from the evening…. gifts, family photo, and the boys playing in the snow.

On Monday Tra came home with us for a one night visit — and we made about 15 dozen cookies…

Friday night is our Christmas party with all our friends which will be so much fun, Jen, Jayme and Brennen are home from school, so the gang is back together.

It’s snowing and it is wonderful!

We went on a winter-walk to Atlas for dinner, then came home relaxed for a bit, then headed out to welcome a good friend home. On our way home we went to Wal-mart to pick up new wind shield wipers as ours were so needing to be replaced – and since we are heading to nanaimo tomorrow it will be a good thing to have.

Well, I’m off to bed — and maybe will watch the snow fall for just a wee bit longer. Happy Snowing!!

Phil and I are pretty spoiled sometimes – like in the Christmas dinner department – tomorrow we are headed to down to have Christmas dinner with Wanda and Tra! This is our little Christmas Tradition – usually we do dinner a little closer to Christmas, but they are going away this year so tomorrow is the day… and boy are we excited! We love dinner itself – but more importantly we love Wanda and Tra so much – Tra and Phil will play games – probably make the giant race track. Wanda and I will visit and chat into the wee hours of the morning. Phil figures we’d never have enough time to ever be done talking with eachother – I figure there could be worse things. We will come home Monday morning, so it will be nice to get away!!

Next week is a busy week – getting things together for our annual Christmas party!! Jason gets here the 20th, Dad is home the 22nd, and then we are well into Christmas time!! Woohoo!!!

I was soo excited about my awesome bargains I found this week – you see, Phil and I were given a king bed in August, when we got married we never thought we would end up with a king bed so we got queen bedding (nice bedding but queen size) So when we got this new bed – we bought sheets… and for the last few months have been sleeping with separate comforters. For Christmas we decided we’d bite the bullet and get a new duvet – and it was a good idea until I realized that anything ‘king’ sized in not cheap – but I was soo happy when in Winners I found a king down duvet for an awesome price! Yay! The next shop I was in I found a duvet cover for a good price as well! Now we are ready! but our new bedding is wrapped under the tree – we don’t get to use it until Christmas. So I guess that means 12 more sleeps!

Tonight was my 1st attempt EVER at making gingerbread – and I will say myself, it didn’t turn out too bad at all. One batch was lost, because I misread the directions and had them in the oven too long… oops. Shannon, Phil and I decorated the gingerbread men — check them out… they aren’t your ‘normal’ kind….