December 5th: Happy Sinterklaas Eve!

      Okay so some of you may be like what the heck, well Jason's family is from Holland and mine from Germany and so there is a celebration of St. Nicholas there. Well the Dutch stole our holiday... Sinterklaas is the celebration of St. Nikolaus and I guess how it goes is he comes on a boat on the 5th with Black Piet and that night if you have been good you put out your shoes and St. Nikolaus will fill your shoes with goodies. If you have been bad Jason says that Black Piet puts you in a bag and beats you. Graphic much! Because this tradition is much more affluent in his family, we got to go to Salt Lake today to his Oma's Sinterklaas party, we didn't win any of the cash prizes but it was still fun to see family and spend some time with all of the cousins (who I am trying to still master their names). 
     Last year in my apartment I told my friends about St. Nikolaus and Jackie and I learned about it in German so we decided to "have him come" and so today since Jason and I's Christmas activity was a craft we made little stockings out of paper and filled them with candy for our friends and went and helped Sinterklaas out with his deliveries for the night! While we were gone he came and left us a small treat! (thanks Mama Wouden for sending those home with us!)

December 3rd: Snowflakes

So our Christmas activity for today was making snowflakes! Jason chose it, so after work we got out some paper and just began trying to make some random designs. We made it through about 6 of them before we just started butchering every one and so we decided to hang those ones and just love those ones. 

December 4th

       Jason actually had a Sunday off! YAY! we went to church, today we got new callings to help with institute date nights; we have been busted. We have not gone to any of them because, well we were either busy or Jason was working. It appears as though I will be going stag to these date nights! That's okay we enjoy serving and making such good friends in our ward. We have been really blessed up here in Logan to make friends and have my friends from last year be such good friends with Jason. We hosted our second family dinner for my friends tonight. We thought there was going to be a bigger group so we made quite a bit of food, but hey i don't have to cook now for lunch or dinner. We had a good time visiting, eating and watching the first presidency message; we have got to work on converting these guys to the lovely life of marriage.. hint hint!!!
        Our Christmas activity for today was having a snowball fight. We even got lucky enough to have it snow, so there was some there to fight with. Jason and I are way smarter than going after each other; instead we waited until our friends Emily and Kai came over to attack them. Emily made fudge and said that she was bringing some over to us, we told her we had a "surprise" for them too and to let us know when they were on there way. Jason and I took fort on our porch behind the fence... were upstairs of a 4-plex, and waited with our snowballs. We got them good, Emily screamed, i'm surprised no creeper came out to see what happened. Emily and Kai stayed for a bit and played a game with us. Okay so it is kind of like our game; it is called compatibility. Ever since we were introduced to it and then purchased it we have won this game, so we like playing it... not tonight. They took us, it came down to the very end and i'm pretty sure they just won by one point. It was way close!! We have been defeated.. I guess it's our turn to own them in their favorite game Dominion! Such a great day!

The beginning of the Christmas countdown

Okay so guilty confession, we got ahead of ourselves before we actually made the little surprise daily packages and started off before December even began. Naturally we kicked off our Christmas season with the classic movie ELF like the weekend after Thanksgiving. Jason had a night off earlier this week and so we had a little night out and went and did some shopping, drove around looking at lights and ended with some delicious Aggie ice cream. At the store we found a random christmas puzzle and for some reason decided to buy it; probably because it was at the dollar store. Jason and I both hate puzzles... so it's 100 large pieces; piece of cake! We were so proud we even made it through the whole thing that we glued it together and put it on one of our christmas shelves.

A real adventure happened on Thursday night, December 1st. We had such a blast. For our wedding we got packages of gingerbread mix and so we decided to put them to use and made a gingerbread house from the mix.
Problems that occured:
   -We don't have a rolling pin (random i know), so we had to use our hands to flatten it out
   - We didn't have a mold for the house, so we had to use a paper cut out we made to try to trace onto
     the dough
   - We decided since it was homemade to homemake frosting
      .... broken beaters
      .... liquid
   SO we laughed a bit while we did it. We emptied out our pantry trying to find the right size cans and boxes to use to prop up the walls while the frosting dried. BUT it worked!!

Why yes, that is me freeballin a gingerbread man.

Mr. Gingerbread: he grew odd amounts in the oven and hit a few sides of the pan, and the frosting dripped too fast.



Our Countdown to Chistmas!

So this year is our first Christmas together and also Jason's first Christmas home and so we are determined to make it special! We decked out our house in decor the Saturday after Thanksgiving. We also have decided to try out some different traditions and have been discussing what traditions we want to do with our new family. Something that Jason did with his family is on Christmas day they always read the story of Christ's birth before opening presents; we want to try this out! ... it will be a fun change from the 8 kids rummaging for presents at my house! I got bored one night while Jason was at work and decided to make my own sort of advent calendar. I made a little package out of paper and put a treat and a activity we could do for the day. Each day we draw one and have to do that activity. I am excited because each day we will be able to have fun together, create a memory and share some Christmas cheer. So far it has been a success.

 Our tree, It even has presents!

Hanging our first ornnament!