Christmas Day: Relaxing at home in Huron

We stayed home for Christmas Day this year, just us and the critters. In fact, I don't think I even left the house. We got up and had breakfast - and a glass of freshly-squeezed juice, made with the juicer Karissa & Tyler gave us. I had pear juice (on the left) and Dan's was a mixture of orange and carrot juices.

Of course, we had a few gifts to open that morning.

The stockings all hung by the chimney....

Mila wasn't quite sure what to do with her presents.

Loki had already gotten her gift (a climbing tree), but we put the feathers in her stocking to play with on Christmas Day, and she destroyed the first feather in just minutes. 

Since we had already gotten ourselves a dining table set, Dan and I just exchanged stocking stuffers again this year....

 

I'm not even sure what we did that day. I know Dan finally got around to shoveling the sidewalk, and I actually played some fitness games on the kinect. Otherwise, we just sat around in our comfy clothes!

For our Christmas dinner, we made Chinese food. (Only the stir fry was homemade - we picked up the rest frozen from Wal-Mart on Christmas Eve!)

It was a pretty relaxing day, which was nice. Then we went back to work for two days, and now here we are again with two days off! Next week, we have Wednesday off again for New Year's Day. Yay!

I've been a busy bee, preparing for my green challenge, which starts in just a few days! I have already written and scheduled a few weekly blog posts to auto-post, which will be really nice if I get busy for some reason when the time comes. My first few weeks are on recycling, green cleaning, and purifying air with plants. Just to give you a little hint of what to expect. ;)

Off to do some more brainstorming, I suppose!

Mickelson Family Christmas 2013

Continuing our two-part Christmas series...

We went out to Dan's grandpa's house Saturday afternoon/evening to get together with the Mickelson family. Instead of the traditional Christmas meal, we decided to go out for pizza one last time at his aunt and uncle's restaurant before the new owners take over. It was a nice break from the regular ham and turkey, since we'd already had it earlier that day (and it was delicious, of course!).

As usual, I was terrible about remembering to take pictures, so most of them are from opening gifts Saturday night. Selena got to start, since she's the youngest.

Then Ian and Jack went next, since they were the only other kids there. (Maria and Steve and kids weren't able to make it this year....)

And here's everyone else.... (Again, the pictures aren't necessarily in order!)

Then, there's Grandpa snoozing with his baby, Mila:

That's all I have for pictures, unfortunately. Sunday, Dan woke up bright and early with...a horrible case of food poisoning (at least, that's what we're thinking) that prevented us from making the drive back home that day. It wasn't a very fun day for him, but I got to sit around and relax for another day, which I always dream of after a busy weekend. We had to miss work today, but at least he felt okay enough to make the drive home. I did a little work from my laptop, and now I'm preparing for a single day of work before the real Christmas.

We'll probably just have a quiet day at home, which is just fine with me.

Hillukka Family Christmas 2013

We just got home from our Christmas weekend in Minnesota. We spend time with both our families, but I am going to break the weekend up into two posts - one for each family. In the past, I have posted the pictures together, and I've had to pick and choose so I wouldn't end up with a really long post full of mostly pictures.

So, we're going to start with the Hillukka family Christmas.

(The pictures aren't necessarily going to be in order, by the way.)

We arrived Friday evening (we had taken off from work at noon so we could get an early start). My mom made wild rice soup, and there were tons of snacks to choose from.

But let's start at the part where we met our new niece, Isabelle. Here are a couple pictures.

Anyway, we opened gifts Friday night. It was most fun to watch Jeremy open his gifts, because he's at the age where he is starting to get excited about new toys.

We had our traditional Christmas dinner on Saturday at lunchtime. It was a busy weekend, so we didn't get to stay long past lunchtime, but it was fun to have everyone together.

Even the doggies:

Mila

Twist

(I guess I didn't get pictures of the other two doggies.)

Kaisa and a couple of the kids came over after lunch to take a family picture, and I was able to give Natalia her Christmas present.

And here we all are....

Jeremy fell asleep just minutes before taking the picture, but at least we got him in there. Notice anyone else in the picture?

Yep, Mila decided she had to be part of it. I had told her to move away, but she decided to plop herself right at my feet and posed for the photo, along with everyone else. And there she sat the entire time.

Well, that's it for the Hillukka Christmas get-together. I'll try to get the Mickelson part up before it's time for bed!

December 2013: What's happening in Huron?

It's December 2013, just two and a half weeks away from Christmas, and what's happening in Huron?

Well, for starters, it has been extremely cold here. All of a sudden, the temperature was in the negatives...it got down to -20 F here at one point. Now, it's a balmy 10 degrees above, and we've had a little dusting of snow today. It's looking pretty white outside, but I would love nothing more than seeing huge, gentle snowflakes falling peacefully from the sky.

But, at least we should have a white Christmas.

~

I've been busy with my writing, and have spent a TON of time lately on my blogs. I've been focusing mainly on my green blog. I've put a lot of time, not only into the design (having had to redesign the whole thing because I couldn't get most of the widgets to work on the original one), but also into researching potential topics. And I have lots of exciting planned for the new year!

Most exciting of all is a giveaway I have planned to kick off the new year and my "going green" project - starting tomorrow! Shhh...the prize is a secret until the giveaway is posted on my blog tomorrow...but I will be giving away a $25 Etsy.com gift card!

I really want to get some traffic to my blog before the 2014 challenge begins, so to earn entries, you will need to complete tasks such as tweeting and posting the giveaway to Facebook, subscribing to the blog, and so on. Hopefully this will help bring traffic to the site and get repeat visitors.

~

Right now, Dan is working on setting up Loki's Christmas present: a nice, sturdy cat climbing tree - unlike the junky one we used to have. It was expensive, but she really needs something to keep her busy, and perhaps it will help her feel safer when we have visitors. We bought it a couple weeks ago, but decided to set it up early. Poor Mila won't get such a grand present, but I'm sure she'll be plenty happy getting lots of treats. It's the only thing she could possibly want, anyway!

We aren't exchanging gifts this year because our gift to ourselves was also expensive: a dining table set that is going to be delivered Monday!! It's the first of many new pieces of furniture we hope to get in the next year or so...as we are able to afford them.

~

And for the grand finale...We got a new niece this past week!! Little Isabelle was born to Karissa and Tyler on Monday; however, we haven't met her yet, so I don't have any pictures to post...so anyone who hasn't already seen pictures on Facebook will have to wait until after we have seen her at Christmas. ;)

That's about all I've got for now, but you can be sure I'll be back soon!

Jeremy

Dawn, Jake, and Jeremy visited a couple weeks ago

your.GREENspiration

Well, I have decided to start a new blog for my 2014 green project; for anyone who hasn't seen it yet, you will find it here.

I had originally been leaning toward making the weekly posts on this blog, but being set to private, it doesn't get much traffic. A public blog will get more exposure, leading to potential book sales - when the time comes. I have even thought that, as I get more involved, I might even be able to come up with shorter, more specific, ebook ideas that I can publish throughout the year.

We'll see how much time and motivation I have, though; I have a feeling I will be pretty busy with all my other goals. If I do end up spending a lot of time on this project, I might have to lower my expectations for writing articles, since it's already pretty difficult to find time for all the different projects I have going on!

VIP Seats

You (the readers of this blog) will still get an occasional "sneak peek" as I work on my weekly green mini-projects, since it will likely be a big part of my daily life. I highly doubt I will dedicate each and every week specifically to one mini-project, since some will take longer, and some will be changes I made long ago that I will use as "fillers" during the weeks that I have nothing new to write about. As a matter of fact, I have already gotten started by ordering a recycling bin and signing up for curbside pickup, so that will be the topic of my very first weekly post.

Anyway, I thought I'd fill you in since I originally brought up my idea on this blog. I don't have much else to say right now, though, so I'll just let you visit the other blog - if you so desire - and decide whether you would like to follow my Go Green in 2014 project from there. I can't wait to get started...in fact, I think I'm going to get started writing some of my weekly posts and schedule them to start posting in the new year!

Have a good week. :)

Thanksgiving in Huron

Pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting

Where has the weekend gone? It's already Sunday...December 1st!

We had a fun Thanksgiving weekend with Mom, Caitlin, Chris, and Trisha - but we missed everyone else we didn't see this year: the rest of my family and Dan's family. Most years, we go back home and spend time with both of our families, but this year, we decided to stay here.

I spent Wednesday evening baking and getting ready for our company. Believe it or not, I actually didn't have much to do Thursday morning because they weren't able to get here until the afternoon, so we had planned on an evening dinner. I got the turkey in the oven and waited....

 

We ate a little later than planned, but it was worth the wait! There was so much food (for six people) that we're still eating leftovers. Have been for days! But everything tasted amazing.

 

 

It's hard to believe we could fit six people at our little table! We spent a lot of time at that table...it seems like we did nothing but eat this weekend!

Of course, we couldn't forget the dessert. I had bought a lemon meringue pie and made pumpkin cupcakes; Mom made a chocolate dessert, and Trisha made chocolate chip cookies.

Loki got pretty cozy with Caitlin while she was working on a paper...

We didn't do much shopping on Friday, but Mom, Trisha, and I went to KMart and I got a couple gifts for the kids. Then Dan and I looked at some furniture for a little while and got some ideas for our Christmas present to ourselves. We're still debating what we should get first; I'm thinking it's going to be a dining table.

We pulled out the Christmas decorations and set up the tree on Friday. Trisha helped me decorate it...

There was a Parade of Lights just a few blocks down from our house that night, and Dan had agreed to ride on a float.

It's hard to tell, but he was on this float

We warmed up with hot chocolate by the fireplace afterward. Mom and Trisha brought some crochet supplies, so we worked on some projects this weekend.

I don't know where this weekend has gone, but it's going to be over way too soon. I'm so not ready to go back to work! Now, I suppose I should get busy writing....