Thursday, December 24, 2009

Show and Family Christmas Party


Over the years, the annual Family Christmas party has rotated through various family member's homes. This year, my Uncle Shane hosted the party.


He also puts on a yearly Christmas rock show to raise food for an organization in the town where he lives. So we loaded up the "sleigh" with our presents, food, family, and Christmas spirit and headed out to his town.

The show takes fun rock songs and blends them in and with traditional Christmas music, sometimes creating non-traditional Christmas music that for us, has actually become traditional.


It has kind of become a family show too in a sense.


There is quite a bit of musical talent in our family and often, the various musical family members perform numbers in the show.


Above, my uncle Shane plays lead guitar in the front, and in the middle, is my uncle Jim, playing I believe bass guitar.


The family gets together and sits throughout the audience enjoying the music. Here are auntie Robyn and Mellie


My cousin Sylvia lends her vocal talents and performs numerous songs.


She combines with other singers and my uncle to do some songs too.

This year my other cousin Olowan got on stage and sang a song too.


The crowd visiting after the show was over


This was the first time John has seen my family perform. I think he enjoyed it!


After the show, we went back to my uncle Shane's house for the Annual Family Christmas party. Everyone came this year I believe. Above is the youngest of the grandchildren, Marisa.


This is Angelina. Such a pretty little girl!

Here are my cousins Jimmy, Angelina and Olowan playing with Halo. He was pretty popular at the party this year!


Here in the back room playing video games are my cousins Angelina and on the left, my cousin Jordan.


We spend time visiting, catching up, munching on delicious food and eventually, we pass around presents for everyone.


So, here I am starting off the present passing!


Everyone passes out their presents for each other and we dig in!


It is always fun to see what everyone gets


This year, a lot of the boys got some fun sleep shorts/boxers. So, for our viewing pleasure they modeled their pants!


From left to right: My cousin Wanblee Ska, cousin Matt Jr, cousin David and Dwayne


They gave us our second round of entertainment for the evening!


It was a good laugh that was for sure. Thanks guys!


The Macie Family, Dwayne, Tiffy and Halo in front of uncle Shane's tree


Uncle Shane and Me


There was even dancing! Mellie and Uncle Shane tango!
It was a fun but late night. Until next year.....Merry Christmas Family!

Christmas Double Date Night


For the past few years we have had an annual friends Christmas party where we get together, eat, play games and have an ornament exchange.


Well this year, everyone was particularly busy doing their own things so the four of us, Dan, Erin, Dwayne and I, got together for a group date.


We started with our gift exchange over dinner at Applebee's. Yummy!


Then it was time to take it back to when we were kids. We drove over to the Grand Sierra Resort and hit up the arcade.

We had tons of tokens and just had fun playing all the different games.

Erin and Dwayne played Dance, Dance Revolution (Erin won) while Dan and I looked on.


Erin and I played a game where we had to shoot dinosaurs. This was our "we are dinosaur hunters" look.


Dwayne took a turn at seeing how many points he could earn throwing a football.


I played my all time favorite arcade game: Ski Ball!


After we were all done with our tokens we counted the tickets we had earned and turned them in for prizes. Much to our happiness, you could redeem some of the tickets for Christmas ornaments! So, even though we didn't do the ornament exchange this year, we each got an ornament anyway to put on our trees! Perfect!



Once we had our prizes it was time for some laser tag. We rented a locker to keep track of all of our stuff and then waited until it was time for us to enter the arena.



It is so much fun to run around shooting a laser at people while earning points!


Dwayne was very sneaky, creeping around the corners and such.


Erin and I never shoot each other, instead we try and gang up on the boys. Sometimes it is difficult but we try! Somehow, they always do better than we do.


See? The boys take it so seriously! We had a really good time though. Sometimes you just have to let your inner child loose and have fun! What a better way to do it than on a double date with your best friends?


After running around the arcade and laser tag we went for hot chocolate, turned up the Christmas music and drove around looking at Christmas lights. It was a great double date night!

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Walking in a Winter Wonderland!


In the last blog I talked about the snow that started falling. Well, it kept falling! All through the night!


Here is what our street and view from our front door looked like when we woke up the next morning! I was so happy! I love it when it snows!


Halo doesn't like when the snow gets too deep in the backyard though. We try and let him out but he stays pretty close to the back door.


There aren't many places he felt like venturing to with all the snow.


His puppy tracks stayed pretty close to the house. Those were the deepest puppy tracks I have seen from him yet!


And much to my liking, the snow didn't stop! It started back up throughout the day and kept snowing! I loved it! We had to go out and take a picture in it and just take it all in.
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Halo and me in our snow coats!


Me, Halo, and Mellie.
Bring on more snow!