Christmas in Kodiak, Year 2.

Another year, another Christmas in the great white-ish north! Unfortunately we were only white-ish, with just a light dusting of snow over night on Christmas Eve. I think I'd rather that than the 3-feet of blizzard-dropped snow we got last year, though!

We both left the cameras sitting on the ground for most of the day, so we don't really have any good pictures from the day. So I'll just tell you what we did!

We had big plans for a day spent in our pajamas, and we didn't have to change those for the most part. We took our time opening gifts, even breaking for the traditional monkey bread breakfast in the middle. With our bellies full, we started making our phone calls when Christina called and asked if we wanted to head out to Ft. Abercrombie for a quick hike/walk with the dogs. Still in our pj's at that point, we put on the warm clothes, tossed on our hats, and headed out for a walk. You don't throw away the opportunity for a hike on a beautiful sunny day up here, even if it is Christmas and you didn't plan to put real clothes on all day!

Jason and I left Brad and Christina to do another loop and headed home, with a date to meet up in a little while for some hot chocolate. In the meantime, we put ourselves together, and headed out to deliver some cookies to some friends in the neighborhood. Cookie delivery done, we changed back into pj's and Brad and Christina came over a little after 3-ish, I think.

Our hot chocolate turned into hours of chatting and laughing, and the next thing we knew, it was almost 7pm!! Though we had each planned our own dinner-for-two, we combined bits and pieces into dinner-for-four, and the good times went on until almost midnight! Lesson learned: never plan a short visit with the Andersons... it hasn't worked yet!!! We had a great time, though, and really enjoyed our low-key dinner and hanging out on the couch!

Of course, there were presents involved yesterday, with Jason getting a gift certificate to design a custom tap handle for his kegerator from Bass Custom Taps as his "big gift," along with a handful of other things he wanted. I think I was a little spoiled, though, since I'm now the proud owner of a gorgeous piece of metal sculpture from a local Kodiak artist. Jason (and his mom and step dad) had an octopus made for me by Mark Witteveen of Metallic Marine Art. The one I got looks a lot like the one at the top of the home page. I LOVE it and have been drooling over them since the first week we got here!!! Fred wasn't left out of the fun, either, though we mostly just used the wrapping paper as his gift! We did get him one new toy, though, which I lovingly brought back from CT when I was there in November. We think he likes it...

But, the best gift of all for us actually came a little earlier in the week. Well, it actually came a lot earlier than that, but we got a first glimpse earlier in the week...


For the four people who may not have heard yet (courtesy of a soon-to-be-Grandma who hasn't stopped telling people since November...), our family will be growing by one this year!!!!! Those fabulous little pictures up there are of our little "Green" Dorval, who will be making his/her appearance sometime around July 15th! The top picture is a great profile, and the bottom one is the baby's two little legs, kicking around in there. That was the first view we had of Green (so named because it's a gender-neutral color appropriate for either a boy or a girl!), and I instantly melted at that sight! I then said to Jason and the doctor (who probably thought I was nuts!), "Hey! There really IS a baby in there!!!" I'm still getting used to the idea of being a mom in just about 6 more months, but I couldn't be happier! We're very excited, and even more excited to finally be able to share the news with everyone!
We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, and we wish you all a blessed 2009!