Oh dear! I'm a terrible blogger!

EEK! I've been very bad at updating my blog! So here has what has been going on.

On December 12th Melinda and I went to Greenfield Village for "Holiday Nights." It was so super fun. The weather was beautiful. Though they didn't get any snow like we did. That was a bummer. It was cold, but it wasn't windy. We had prepared for the cold and were bundled up and weren't too cold until the very end when the winds picked up. I had two pairs of flannel PJs under my jeans, 3 pairs of sock, a thermal shirt, turtle neck and sweatshirt under my Columbia parka. I forget how many layers Melinda had one. At Greenfield Village the houses were all decorated for Christmas. The paths were lit with hanging lanterns. There were groups of carolers and lots of employees dressed in period clothing. They had fire pits located around the park with benches to help keep you warm. There was a stand where they were roasting chestnuts. There was of course hot chocolate, which was delicious. There was a building with 20 different gingerbread houses made by some culinary students that you could then vote on. There were some really neats one. They had free ice skating, but we didn't participate in that since neither of us are very good on skates. At the Taste of History restaurant they had Turkey dinners, which was really tasty. Santa Claus was up on the roof of the one house greeting guests, though Melinda and I thought he was sort of annoying. They also had two real reindeers. At the end of the evening they sang Christmas carols while fireworks lit up the sky. The fireworks were pretty. Nothing too fancy. It was really fun. Definitely put us in the holiday spirit. Here are a few photos:

Me waiting for it to start



Roasting Chestnuts



The tree at the Wright Brothers home



The tree at the Sarah Jordan boarding house



Carolers in the gazebo



Dining table set for a wedding feast at the Susquehanna Plantation



Fife and drum group around the fire (this photo isn't hte best because the smoke was blowing towards me)



World War II reenactors



One of Santa's reindeer!



Santa!



Chimney Sweeps



Turkey dinner (This was a kids portion! We were stuffed! It was really good!)



Inside of the Martha Mary chapel. There had been a wedding here earlier in the day



Gingerbread houses







More carolers



Melinda at the Tintype Studio



Fireworks (I still haven't quite figured out how to photograph fireworks)[/b]





The next weekend we went to the Christmas walk at Dow Gardens. It was beautiful. It was one of the "Silent Night" days so there were no choirs or music, but it was still really pretty. Not a lot of people at the beginning, but more came later in the evening.

Here is a layout I did with some of our photos:



I will link it for credits after ScrapMatters is back up and running.

On Christmas Eve Pat came up. Mom, Melinda, and I went to the Candlelight service at Church. We were going to go to the 11:00 PM one, but since the weather people kept saying that bad weather was coming we went to the 7:00 PM one. It was beautiful. My favorite part was singing "Silent Night" by the light of lots of little candles.

On Christmas we opened presents. Melinda got the entire series of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman from Pat. We promptly started watching it. We had dinner then Pat and Melinda played "Simpson's Scene It" which Pat won both games. Then Melinda and I went to the movies to see "Alvin and the Chipmunks: the Squeakel." Very cute movie! We really liked it. After that we went back home to watch more Dr. Quinn.

We've been watching Dr. Quinn pretty much none stop. We just finished it on Saturday. I forgot how good that show was.

For New Year's we stayed home and watched Dr. Quinn. Nothing too special. No I was very happy to say goodbye to 2009. It was a bad year. Here is my layout on 2009:



Will link once SM is fixed.

For Melinda's birthday we didn't really do much. I made her jumbo muffins that were really good. Then we watched some Dr. Quinn before going to lunch. Then we went to Blockbuster and the grocery store. Had dinner with Mom and followed that up with presents and cake and ice cream. Pat got Melinda tickets to see Michael Buble at the Palace of Auburn Hills. He got her floor seats!!! She is soo excited. I'm less excited. It should be fun though.

On Friday we went to see the Spirit play the Niagara Ice Dogs. They started fighting 2 seconds into the game! Literally 2 seconds into the game. It was crazy. The game was pretty good. We weren't really rooting for anyone in particular, but rather just enjoyed watcing the game. The Spirit won 5-3.

So that has been what has been going on. I need to post a TON of layouts since I've been really bad at doing that. I will wait until ScrapMatters is back up so I can link them for credits.

Later!
Melissa