Our Holiday Season

This year Josh and I hosted our first ever Christmas Eve at our house.  I was a little stressed out with the preparation, I wanted to make sure that everyone was going to be comfortable, well fed, and relaxed.  On Christmas Eve morning I felt good, I knew that I had done everything I could to make sure everyone enjoyed themselves, and honestly, I think it worked!

Check out our table!  Those are Grandma Bearden's rolls on the table (you won't find a better roll anywhere in the world), my clearance napkin find from Pier One, and a few carefully selected wedding pinwheels!

It was so special for me to have my family all in one place and enjoying each other's company.  This picture of both of my Grandmas makes me a very happy lady.

Here is one of Kelsey and I, she was rocking the ugly/cute Christmas sweater.

Josh did an amazing job helping me get everything ready, he helped cook clean, and best of all kept me sane.  I was pretty darn excited that he cut the ham and put it on the platter too, very traditional of us!

My sister is a lost cause when it comes to her collegiate allegiance.  She made sure to put some purple graffiti up on our whiteboard.  I'm not sure how well you can see it, but I did my best to hijack her design with some Cougar Pride.

My perfect Christmas morning starts out with a cup of coffee, a sugar cookie (or three), and the Disney Christmas Parade.  My Christmas morning was perfect!

Every year Josh and I leave out a plate of cookies for Santa.  This year, imagine our surprise when we woke up to find them actually missing!  We have a very strong suspicion that Santa had some help with his cookies from a 100lb furry elf.  Regardless of his behavior while we weren't looking, Leonard got into the spirit of things in the morning and opened a few of his own Christmas presents.

It has become a tradition for Josh and I to take ALL DAY to open our presents from one another.  As per usual, we tend to spoil each other.  We both got new puffy, down ski jackets, and more candy in our stockings than any reasonable person should eat in a year.  My favorite gift from Josh is a tea box.  It has spots for all my different types of teas and a glass lid so I can see them - its kinda silly, but I LOVE IT!  My Aunt Sue and cousin Laura from AZ sent us this backpack with a full picnic set inside.  We are already planning some summer hikes to use it!

We spent the rest of the day relaxing, and then we shared a delicious Christmas dinner.  This year rib eye steaks and crab cakes were on our rhyming menu. It was as decadent and amazing as it sounds.

On the 26th, we packed up the camper and got ready to head up to Crystal for our annual 5 night ski trip.  I'll be honest, the snow was awful.  There was one day where it was so icy that it was physically impossible to stop when you wanted to, and another day with such poor snow coverage that we only took 2 runs.  BUT, we had a great time.  Our friends Markus and Joanna brought their new camper up for a couple nights, and our other friend Doug, brought his camper up for New Year's. We had the absolute best neighbors to share our campfire with.

We had a fantastic Holiday season, and we hope you did too!  Happy 2014!

2014 - WITH

Last year my New Year's Resolution was to go without one thing every single day, the thing varied from month to month.  I had limited success.  I tended to forget or just decide that it was worth paying the dollar fine to the charity fund.  With a little more reflection I think there were two major flaws with my "without" plan.

1. Its inherently negative.  I've been trying very hard to be positive and having to subtract something from my life every day of 2013 was more challenging than I expected.
2. I was stuck on the idea that it would be something different every month.  There were several months where the "without" I chose was arbitrary and not really productive for me.  I should have repeated my "withouts"; I would have gotten more out of it.

So, in 2014 my New Year's Resolution is:  To go with something every day.  I am going to decide what that thing is a little in advance of each month, and I will definitely be repeating the ones that are challenging or particularly helpful.

January will be the month of exercising or stretching.  We have to do one or the other every day.  I think it is very possible and has all sorts of benefits.

Other ideas include:

• Dinner at the table (or a table, it doesn't have to be our home table) every night
• Pay someone a compliment
• Take Leonard for a walk
• Contact (text, email, phone call) someone I don't live with and say hi
• Take my Vitamins

 I am open to other suggestions - any ideas?

The same $1 dollar to charity applies for each day when I fail to do my "with" of the month.  Here we go!

Happy 2014!!

December - Without Popular Radio; and "The Year Without" Recap

December without popular radio went very well.  My theory was that I can look away from a bright ad at the store, but I can't just un-listen to 3 minutes of ads between songs I enjoy.   The biggest negative was that we both got pretty sick of NPR.  I didn't realize they repeated so many stories!  But, the positive was well worth it for me, I avoided all of the obnoxious Holiday commercials and kept up my Christmas Spirit.  Success!


So if it was relatively easy, why are points on the board?  Well, there was one day where Josh and I worked in the garage.  The garage radio is up high and we turn it on by plugging it in (incidentally this is the same boombox I got for my birthday back in 1996).  It's just too hard to reach, so we listened to whatever station was on.  My other tally is from when I was running Christmas errands around town.  It took me several hours and I needed some music to sing along to and keep my energy up.  It worked and as I was doing my errands I was giving money to charity :)

December:
Josh: 1
Kiki: 2

So, this means our final tallys for 2013 are:

Josh: 161
Kristina: 147

Looking at those huge numbers, I'm not impressed...percentages are equally disappointing.  I'll talk about why I think those numbers are so high in a later post, but, lets focus on the positive here.

Look at all that money the Schafers are giving to charity!

We will give out that money throughout the year, and we will keep you posted on how it gets distributed.  If anyone has any great causes in mind, I'd love to hear them.  Right now I know we will be giving money to S.O.D.A., Heifer International, and the Seattle Symphony's Youth Program.

We hope everyone had a fantastic 2013, and here's to an even better 2014!