What makes Christmas time special!

Well, besides the obvious reason for CHRISTmas,  I thought I would share a few things that we do/have each Christmas season. 

First, there is of course the family time spent making and decorating Christmas cookies!  We got to spend some time with Mikey's parents and Zach on Sunday to decorate some amazing sugar and gingerbread cookies, we won't tell you how Zach killed his gingerbread man, but we had a great time!  Then tonight it is off to my parents house for more cookie decorating, we went up a few nights ago and made a ton of cookies, and unfortunately we are forcing my mom to throw away retire the spritz cookie maker!  The picture is of one Mikey made for me!

 

Then, I grew up each year with an Advent calendar with the cheapo chocolate inside, and Mikey and I have continued this tradition, even though he just realized there wasn't a 25th day... 

 

And since I said we took all the hand-me-down Christmas tree ornaments we could get, I thought I would show you a few of our favorites!





That is about it, the snow is almost all melted and it is going to be in the 50's this weekend!  OH, did you hear we bought tickets to go to HAWAII?  We are super excited!  We are going to spend a week with my parents in Maui!  It is only 47 days away, but whose counting really!  Merry Christmas, we hope you all have a great day spent with family or friends or just a beautiful Christmas tree!

Christmas is coming!!!

We are so very excited for Christmas this year!!  We have decorated and even finished Christmas shopping, Michael put up Christmas lights last weekend, and we ordered stocking with our names on them, and we decorated our tree with all the hand-me-down ornaments we could get our hands on!  We are ready for Santa! 

We have over six inches of snow on the ground and have shoveled over three times already!  We just wanted to share our pictures of our decorations and our snow!  We can't really show you how it is only about 6 degrees outside.  Hope everyone is doing well and is staying nice and toasty! 









 

Thanksgiving Feast for Two!

Happy Thanksgiving!!  We started to fix our fixings yesterday, and I didn't realize how much one recipe of my mom's cranberry salad really made, looks like we will be eating it for days weeks!  Really if you want some leftovers please just come on over, I am sure there will still be some!  Mikey We got the turkey in the oven at about 6:30 this morning!  Then all we had left to do was cook the potatoes and carrots and stuffing and rolls and gravy and then we were ready for our grand feast for two!!  I think we had enough food for about ten though, whoops!  Here is a picture of our turkey and our feast for two.  We hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and we hope you all are doing well!  Love, Julie and Michael  



 

Chinese Food

So, I figured I would share my thoughts about our favorite Chinese food restaurant.  It is a hole in the wall.  It has a huge, and I mean huge picture of the Great Wall on one wall and of course and mirror on the other wall, and tons of the owners family photos taken in China.  It is in a older strip shopping center.  It has the "we serve alley cat" vibe pouring out of it.  And, WE LOVE IT!  So, it is called Over Seas 101 and it has been next to the Target on Union and Academy for years decades.  No matter what we order we are never disappointed.   And the little old man and woman that work there every day, are the sweetest people!  So, if you are ever in the area, I highly recommend picking some up or sitting down and enjoying the ambiance.   Oh, and I can't forget to mention the almond cookie they serve at the end of your meal, it goes so perfectly with the last few sips of your hot tea! 

We found the place from living across the street in the Union Heights apartments, 3 years ago.  You might remember the name of the apartments from the nightly news, just about every week.  The same apartment that Brett's foot fell through the deck one night.  The reason we are so excited about the place today, we took Andy and Pam there for dinner, and they were able to experience the magic and the ambiance in person!  Hope they enjoyed it as much as we do.  Even if they didn't, we followed up the experience with a great trip to Josh and John's ice cream!  That'll make up for anything they didn't like! 

Just got off the phone with Reagan and her parents, who are driving to Texas for Thanksgiving.  We are sad we are going to miss the family and festivities this year, and we'll be watching all kinds of football with you in spirit!  Hope everyone has a great time, and we look forward to hearing the stories afterwards.  And Mom (or Mom-in-Law, depending on who is writing this), we'll be calling you many times for cooking advice and other tips on the big day.   

To completely change the subject, we have had several questions and eulogies regarding Michael's old vehicle, the Dodge Intrepid (dot com), and its seemingly untimely demise.  At time of trade in, the old girl had 142,000 miles on her.  Unfortunately, being a Dodge, that high number includes some light - heavy smoking (burning of oil), and a dislike for longer trips, just about anything over 60 miles at a time.  After a time, the overwhelming amount of memories and love for her couldn't overcome the difficulties.  For those that have asked, the final picture of the Dodge Intrepid:



Oooohhh, and we'll add pictures of the Thanksgiving feast when we are done, and the firemen have left. 

Thanks for reading!  Have a great Thanksgiving!

Hello Blog World!

Hi Everyone,  We figured it was about time to start our own blog, seeing how we have a website that we never update, now we are adding a blog!  I guess I should update everyone on the latest news of our lives, there is nothing that exciting.  No babies for starters, thank heavens.  We bought Michael a new 06' Jeep Liberty on Friday, he is very excited to have 4WD, so he can go climb all sorts of 14ers that we couldn't drive to in the cars!



And we bought a 15 pound turkey this week for our first Thanksgiving dinner that we are going to burn make together!  Okay, I am done with the cross out thing now...  So, we have complied all the family recipes we want for all the sides, and now we just need to decide what kind of desserts we want.  

Well, other than that, we got about 5 or 6 inches of snow last night, Mike finished the last running race of the Fall Series today!  It was 34 degrees at the start, and Mikey had to use his 4x4 to even get there!!



We are also trying to plan our vacations for next year.  We are currently debating between going back to Europe to see Paris, London and Ireland or going to Hawaii with mom and dad for week while they are out there.  Such a difficult decision, poor us!  Oh, then there is also the decision of whether or not we should finish the basement ( I think we are going to hold off on that since we got another car payment now).   Well, that's about it for now, I will try to write once a week or so, so add us to your Google Reader!   Go Broncos!