Christmas!

Oh how I love Christmas! It has taken me a while to get these pictures posted, but I have been so busy lately! And besides, better late than never! So I wanted to do a Christmas picture card and newsletter to send to people, but I ran out of time before Christmas, so I decided I would just post some pictures and our letter on the blog. So here you go...! Merry Christmas! So of course I decorated for Christmas, and so I have to post some pictures! As our friend Jesse says, "it looks like a Christmas bomb went off in here!" And it most definitely does!

So this is our beautiful, "perfect" Christmas tree. And Zac would like me to point out that he was the one who decorated the tree. He set it up in the stand, put the lights on, topped it with a star, and arranged the ornaments so perfectly. I have to admit, he did a great job!

I have to take credit for these curtains. I found this fabric at Jo-Ann's on the red-tag clearance, and bought it on a day when all clearance items were half off, so they were dirt cheap, it was awesome! I think they turned out pretty great. I even had a happy miscalculation that made them turn out even better. After a measuring error, I ended up putting a band of the opposite color across the bottom of each curtain. You can't really see it in the picture, but when you see it in real life and you do notice it, I think it's actually a nice touch.

This is the rest of the room. Included in this picture is the advent calendar that my mom made for me.

I made these trees at Thanksgiving. They aren't actually done, but they are done enough for a picture I suppose.

There are some stuffed moose (or meese as my mom would say) in this picture that my mom gave me.

As you can see, one stocking has a "K" on it and the other is blank. This is because I couldn't find a stocking at any store that had a "Z" on it! How lame! So I will have to find a way to put a "Z" on it. And anyway my sister is supposed to be making me and Zac our special Christmas stockings, which we were supposed to get for Christmas, but, ehem, someone didn't finish! Chop Chop Rodent! (Rodent-that is what I call Kayla by-the-way. You should call her that too, she loves it.)



In this picture is a little wind-mill thing (I'm not really sure what you call these things) anyway, it is really cute, and my mom and sister got it for Zac and me when they were in Europe. Thanks guys!

This is the centerpiece on our table, and I have to say that I am pretty proud of it since I made it myself, and I think it turned out pretty awesome! I saw one like it at Costco for like 60 bucks and I said, "heck no!" to that price, so I went to Jo-Ann's and got the flowers and green foam stuff on a great sale, and the hurricane lamp and deer at Kohl's on an awesome 70% off sale and made the whole thing for like $20. Sweet huh?

By the way it is way cheaper to buy real poinsettias than the fake ones, and real is always so much better than fake! We got this one at Home Depot for like 6 or 7 dollars and the fake ones about the same size were about $20 even at Wal-Mart. The moose in this picture is from my mom, and the cute Santa Clause is from Ann (Zac's mom).

This is a picture of the little bar thing that divides our living/dinning room from the kitchen. If you look really closely in the picture on the left, you can see a Santa Clause in the background, I point this out because it is really cute, and my mom hand painted it. She made one for herself and her mom, and when she got back the one from her mom she gave it to me. Lucky me! Tough luck Rodent! Oh and also you may notice that there are two reindeer, one in each picture, at the ends of the bar. Mom told me to only take one, and leave one for you Rodent, but as you can see I took both! Ha! I can taunt my sister like this because she is currently out of the country on a cruise with my parents- without me! and I am slightly jealous, hence the taunting. And since she has something (a two week cruise around the bottom of South America!) slightly better to rub in my face (which she hasn't actually done yet, either because she is a better person than me, or the more likely reason, she has been too busy with finals to get around to it) I am taking the opportunity now to gloat in the fact that I got two reindeer instead of one!!!

Sorry you have to put these two pictures together in your mind. I took them with the panorama feature on our camera, but I'm not sure how to meld them together. On my old camera it did it for you, all on it's own, so now that I have to do it myself...well... I'm at a loss.

So anyway, you kind of get the picture of the Christmas bomb that went off in our apartment. As for some of the things we have done this month, on Dec. 6th we went to Zac's work Christmas party. It was a blast! We had dinner with a bunch of our friends, we talked and we even did some dancing. It was awesome because we could go out and dance, and look dumb, and nobody cared, or will remember because they were all so drunk. (Nice huh?)
We actually forgot our camera, but luckily Cat remembered to bring hers so we got some nice pictures from her.

This is Jesse, Cat, Zac, and myself. Kaylee, Ryan, and some other friends that we know from Stryker who are also members of the church (Jesse and Carly, and Don and Sarah) were also there, and we did get some pictures with them, but I still have to get them from Kaylee, because luckily she remembered to bring a camera too! Oh and Stryker also had a raffle and Zac actually won something! He won this cool i-home! We actually already have one but it was still cool to win something! And I "kind-of" won the table centerpiece. At the beginning of the raffle they said to count off around the table, Zac started so I was #2. They announced that #4 won the centerpiece. Well #4 was a girl that we didn't know, and she didn't seem very excited when she won, and when she and her friend left about 5 minutes later, and didn't come back, I was the first to speak up and say, "well 2 is half of 4, so I will take it!" Every one agreed; hence I "kind-of" won the table centerpiece.

Also this month, Cat and Jesse left for Hawaii for a weekend (lucky dogs!) so they let us watch little Pupface again! We loved every minute of it of course! And of course we had to put her in a Santa hat and take a picture! She is just so cute we couldn't resist!

Oh!!! Who knew napping could be so cute?!!

And Zac is a pretty big sucker for rubbing her tummy! She definitely gets spoiled when she is with us!

Also this month, we went to our ward Christmas party, which I made posters and cookies for. It was a Polar Express theme so everyone came in their pajamas. I wore my jingle bell reindeer slippers and reindeer antlers to the party. They were quite the hit, so it's too bad that we didn't take a picture of it. However, a number of people in the ward stopped me for a picture, because it was pretty funny looking, and they remembered their cameras! Zac wore the Santa hat, and luckily my mom had made him some pajama pants last year for Christmas, because he usually just wears basketball shorts, and basketball shorts don't really look like pajamas.

We also went to Zac's team party for work. It was at his boss's house with just the people he works with in Joint Preservation. It was really nice to get to meet his boss and all the people that he works with. His boss Stacey is so funny, incredibly nice, and a wonderful hostess. She made a wonderful dinner for us! Then Stacey and the Director of R&D , Todd, gave everyone a very nice plaque for being the founders of Joint Preservation and a couple of gag gifts. Zac got a Budweiser baseball cap with a bottle opener on it, because they teased him that since they go on outings where everyone drinks, and he obviously doesn't, at least this way he will be useful with his bottle opener. Everyone is actually very respectful of the fact that Zac doesn't drink, which is really awesome. They also got him some golf balls because they know how much he loves to golf. We also did a white elephant exchange, and we ended up with movie tickets and a white elephant goblet (which will come in handy as our gift to the next white elephant that we go to!) We also played a rousing game of Catch Phrase, which got a little intense, but it was all in good fun. I wish that I had remembered my camera, but as you can tell I forgot the camera for a lot of important functions! One of his co-workers, a really sweet girl, Lindsay, had a camera and was taking a lot of pictures, so maybe she can send some to Zac and we can post them.

This past Thursday we took the 45 minute drive into San Francisco to spend an evening there. We ate out at a restaurant on Market Street and topped it off with seeing Phantom of the Opera at the Orpheum Theater in San Francisco. It was so cool! I have seen it before but Zac hadn't so it was cool to see him experience it for the first time. We both loved it! We didn't end up getting home until 1 in the morning - on a work night! It felt like college again.

So all of that, plus of course work (Zac still at Stryker, and me substitute teaching),Christmas shopping, and callings at church, we have been pretty busy this month! We are leaving for Utah in a couple of days for Christmas and we are really excited for the break! We are going to spend Christmas with Zac's family, and it is going to be cool because almost all of his family will be there, even his sister who lives all the way out in Illinois. The only person who won't be there is his youngest brother Dallin who, is of course still on his mission in Hong Kong. We will be in Utah until Jan. 4, so we would love to see anyone who is or will be in Utah from Dec. 24 to Jan. 4.

We are so grateful for all of our friends and family. We are incredibly blessed, and we thank our Heavenly Father for it everyday. We wish everyone a Very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!

Love,
Kira and Zac Greenhalgh