Merry Christmas from JanEric Hills

Eric and I have been enjoying the Christmas season. Everything seems to be so much more relaxed this year... that probably has something to do with not living 3 hours apart, planning a wedding, buying a house, moving, and selling a house. Take those items off the list and the shopping, decorating and baking are actually rather relaxing.


We have enjoyed decorating our house, figuring where to put stuff as well as what to do outside. We have a total of 4 Christmas trees, but two of them (the two artificial trees I had) are on the screened-in porch with just white lights, so you can see them when driving up the hill to our house. We put Eric's small fiber optic tree in the corner in the dining room. We both wanted to get a real tree this year too, since we are together this year and there are two of us to put it up. We found a great balsam fir a the Lion's Club lot (even though they were nearly sold out) so we helped with their Christmas food basket program in the process.


On Saturday Eric's parents brought Katie & Alec over for the afternoon. We had another inch or so of snow on Friday/Saturday but it was still relatively warm out so it turned out to be great for sledding down the hill in our back yard. We all had so much fun, as all six of us got in on the action. We had a couple bail outs to avoid trees, but it was tons of fun. Katie and Alec brought their sleds, but I think after having so much fun Eric & I are going to get our own sleds. My bottom was very cold and wet because unlike Kate and Alec, I don't have any snow pants.


We came inside to warm up, and decorated Christmas cookies that Eric and I had made earlier in the week. Eric's office had a cookie exchange today so he headed off to work this morning with 7 dozen butter cookies with cream cheese frosting and 7 dozen oatmeal raisin cookies. Katie was an excellent cookie decorator, as was Eric... but they both pale in comparison to my friend Nikki who is a cookie decorating savant. Alec was pretty good too, but he was really only interested in frosting the cookies that he could eat and since we needed to take them to the exchange once we cut him off from eating he quickly lost interest in decorating. This is a conversation Katie and Eric had while deocorating.

Katie: Uncle Eric, I sure am happy you got married! I have really been wanting an Aunt.
Eric: Well Katie, I am really hapy I got married too!
Katie: Well, it this is working well for both of then.

It was too cute.


We have had a couple of quiet evenings and have been able to listen to Christmas music and take in a couple of favorites like Polar Express and Charlie Brown Christmas.


Weather permitting we plan to have lunch with Eric's parents on Christmas Eve, before traveling to Gibson City that afternoon/evening. We will spend Christmas Eve night at my brothers house, then get together with my family at Mom & Dad's on Christmas. Saturday morning we will head out to Andover and have Christmas with the Noyd's at Travis & Steff's house. Right now it is looking like the worst weather days are going to be Wednesday and Friday and those are the days we don't have to travel.


Wishing you all a Merry & Blessed Christmas!

Our Christmas Tree

Katie & Alec head down the hill

Eric & Alec vs. Linda & Katie

Decorating Christmas cookies... Yummy!

Catching Up & Other Random Thoughts

So we are pretty much the worst bloggers ever, so here is a bit of highlight reel from the last month or so.

The weekend before Thanksgiving we took off work Friday and headed to Chicago. We took the Amtrak from Kewanee. We stayed at the Marriott on Michigan Avenue, meeting up with my sister, Jan and her family. Larry had a couple of conferences there so he hooked us up with a good deal on our room. Friday we went to Rock Bottom Brewery for lunch, did a little shopping on Michigan Avenue, then met up with our good friends Nathan and Stacey for dinner and drinks at Goose Island. It was nice to catch up since the last couple of times we got together a couple of us were getting married.

Saturday Eric & I had a great day at Adler Planetarium, then watched a little bit of the Festival of Lights Parade from our hotel room. We met up with the Pfeiffers and the Chrismans (Larry's sister and her family) for a great dinner at Heaven on Seven. It was so delicious and lots of fun.

Sunday we slept in, did a bit more shopping and hung out with the Pfeiffers for a bit before taking the train home. All in all a great weekend, and taking Amtrak was easy and relaxing. Once in the city used public transportation which I am slowly starting to master.

Once we got home from Chicago there wasn't much rest as we started getting ready to host our families for Thanksgiving. I managed well roasting my first turkey, although it took an hour longer than anticipated. I used a cooking bag which made it really moist, and is supposed to speed up the cooking. It was really moist, but the speeding up the cooking was a total myth. All in all it was a great day with both of our families. We are still finishing up the last of the leftovers. We were starting to get a little tired of them, but yesterday discovered that turkey-cheddar scrambled eggs are the bomb diggity.

Now we are getting ready for Christmas. It has been lots of fun trying to figure out exactly how to decorate JanEric Hills. We have the lights up outside on the front of the house, and more lights and a couple of lighted trees on the back screen porch. We have an artificial tree up, and hope to get a real tree at the tree farm a few miles away this weekend... weather permitting.

A couple of random thoughts. Tonight I headed into town to pick up a few groceries before the snow hits us tomorrow... it is weird to see all the Christmas lights up and tractors still harvesting in the fields. Also, yesterday we went to see Katie and Alec's Christmas program at their church. They did a great job. I got to hold baby Jack for most of the service. He was a good boy, and fell asleep during the message (no offense pastor) but woke up for the last song. He totally gave me all sorts of smiles (the first he has smiled for me) during the "Glo-o-o-o-ria" part of "Hark the Harold Angels Sing". It was too cute.

The gang at Heaven on Seven

Enjoying our hurricanes at Heaven on Seven

Jan & Eric

Lane & Larry