McLellan Family Newsletter

                                                                        We flew up to Park City with Alex Osborn, Preston & Jennie Minor and their kids Truman and Adilyn for a long weekend of skiing/snowboarding. If Jeff snowboards and i ski, I have time to get ALMOST to the bottom of the hill before he catches up to me. The minute or so it takes him to buckle his bindings when he gets off the chair lift lets me take off and try like heck to not let him catch me. He’s pretty fast, though.                                    The weather was PERFECT each day. Crystal clear skies and fresh powder from earlier in the week.                                     I think goggles make everyone look like a bug.                                    Cheese!                                    Outside the condo where we stayed (thanks again, Alex. You’re the best!) Truman found a snowbank that made for an awesome cave.                                    He dug so far into the snowbank that he had to crawl in and out. How fun for a kid!                                    Friday night we went to dinner at the lodge where Jennie told the waiter it wa my birthday. They put this huge sombrero on my and sang “Happy Birthday”. At least I got a free sundae!                                    This is a purple moose that was in someone’s front yard. We don’t know why they have a statue of a moose, let alone a purple one, but we thought it was pretty funny and took a picture.   

                                   Jeff surprised me this year with a bday party the night BEFORE my birthday. He sent out emails to our friends, had it catered by a local mexican restaurant, and told me not to come home until 6:30pm because “the girls are working on a surprise for you”.                                    Alex Osborn, Lisa Bell, Cristina Cook, Becca Williamson, and Autumn Teemsma came …                                    … along with my parents (I love you both!!) …                                        … Cristina Cook, Becca & Sophie Williamson … again …                                    and Jeff, Lisa & Ryan Bell sat and talked for a while.                                       It was great getting to have our friends over for a few hours that night, hang out with my parents, and eat really yummy food …                             … and we learned that Freddy does NOT share his seat well with others.                               Thank you, Jeff and everyone there, for the best surprise birthday party ever. In fact, that was the ONLY surprise party I’ve ever had, so it was truely memorable and fun. I love you tons!!  

             We went to Hemet to help Jimmy’s fiance move out of her townhouse and got to drop by Dave Snow’s place to say “hi”. He was in the middle of re-landscaping his front yard.              Then we drove by the house where Jeff grew up. Ah, the memories of sweeter times …            (That’s Jeff taking a picture of himself for fun) 

      I wanted to get a picture of all the cards we gave and got for Valentines Day. The girls insisted on being in the picture, which is adorable …… until they started fighting about who could stand in front … … and forgot the whole purpose of the cards they had JUST exchanged. Haha!! Love it! 

 Autumn Teemsma sends me a text message inviting us to a “Top Chef” -styled New Year’s Eve party. We each can bring 2 dishes, and the secret ingredients are citrus and potato. (You can use either or both in the 2 dishes.) I brought potato and spinach turn-over thingy called a knish and a potato and bacon salad. Both were pretty good, but it was up to the judges to decide the winner. The judges were friends of Autumn who came just to taste the food. Lucky!! Of course, Autumn’s dishes were AMAZING! She ended up winning … of course. After the tasting, we all got to try the dishes. Dig in!

One Sunday afternoon we decided to go to the parkafter church so the girls could run around and enjoy the nice weather. They each found HUGE trees to climb in.   Rio skinned her knee getting in/out of the tree and had to inspect the boo-boo for a good 5 minutes.Raine found a cool tree with branches that were easy to climb on. 

A little reminder for y’all- Jeff’s cheap. My dad calls it “frugal”, Jeff thinks he’s “thrifty”, but it’s all the same. So here’s the situation … we ran out of firewood at the end of winter last year. Not a problem. We have 9 months to find more. Problem. We didn’t. With a broken heat and no wood for a fire WE’RE FREEZING! It was only 52 degrees in our house last Saturday at 11am. Can you imagine how cold it was when we woke up?! Jeff’s “thrifty” solution was to buy insulation for the windows to keep the heat in/cold out.

We put double-stick tape around the frame, covered the window in a thin plastic sheet (kinda like Saran Wrap), and used a hair dryer to more-or-less shrink wrap the window. The result … a dead air space that nicely keeps the cold air from blowing in. Brilliant!

This is a window BEFORE the sheeting. (The oustide is kinda dirty.)

Then the double-stick tape and plastic sheet go up around the frame …

And, prest-o-change-o, we have an insulated window. We used just one sheet to cover this window because we don’t need to open it. Otherwise, we’d use a sheet for the top window and another for the bottom so we can open it in the summertime. Great idea, Jeff!!!  

 ps. We also got the heater fixed yesterday, so now it’s nice and toasty inside. The insulation keeps the letting in a cold draft. Nice!!

We got to have decorations up for the entire glorious month of December. it’s amazing how much fun setting up decorations can be when kids are involved. On the other hand, taking down decorations can be quite the downer. The lights, the smells, and the natavities everywhere always make our home seem more cheery and warm during the winter.Setting up the christmas tree was a bit of a chore since it was taller than our ceiling so we had to chop off the top foot or so of the tree. Oops! We found some great garlands to put all over the house again. Last year they were real, but this year I went cheap and got the fake kind. =(When you add bows, sprigs of poinsettias and berries, and pine cones you can make even the ugliest garlands look great!The sad day finally came after Christmas when we had to take down the tree. Hey, there’s Gracie!  For spite, the tree shed almost all of its needles as it was drug through the house to the backyard. Mean tree!! And here it will lay until we chop it into firewood once it dries. You can see 4 watermelons left over from this year’s harvest. We kinda were over watermelons by the time these were ripe. I guess I could chop them up and throw them into the compost pile in the corner. 

Here’s our Christmas card this year. If you didn’t get one don’t feel bad considering most people didn’t outside of immediate family. Sorry! The card is really cute, and you can drag it around to see the front, inside, and back. Enjoy and Merry Christmas! =)

My office had a decorating contest between the departments to see who could come up with the best decorations for the holidays this year. This is the first year the contest has been put on and we’re (Celine, April, and I) the smallest department (I don’t know if we even have a department name) so we really had to impress the judges with our decorating prowess. Celine came up with the idea of doing the 12 Days of Christmas so we each took 4 days and bought/made the decorations for those days. And guess what?! We won!! Yippee!! We all get an expensed lunch at the restaurant of our choice. Yumm. Twelve “Dummers” Drumming (April make a littel type-o. Tee hee)

Eleven Pipers Piping. (They’re drawings taped to a garland.) 

Ten Lords a Leaping. (I used littel marionette dolls and suspended them from the light above the desk.)  

Nine Maids a Milking. 

Eight Ladies Dancing. We couldn’t find pictures of ladies so these kids will do.  

Seven Swans a Swimming. 

Six Geese a Laying. (Like the swans, it’s hard to find fake birds so we cut them out. Cute, huh?!) 

Five Gold Rings (These are big brass rings covered in colored Reynolds Wrap.)

Four Calling Birds. (Can you see the 4 plastic birds in the wreath?) 

Three French Hens. (I found ceramic roosters and borrowed the hat boxes. Thanks Becca!)  

Two Turtle Doves. (April originally wanted to put out some turtles and bars of Dove soap. haha!)  

And a Partridge in a Pear Tree ….