THE MICKEY MOUSE CLUB!

November of 2009 was a fun month. For about two years we've had a family reunion in the works. We spent Christmas 2007 in Utah with Skyler's family, and it was there that we opened a present saying that Uncle Brian and Aunt Tammy (Skyler's aunt and uncle- his Mom's brother) wanted to have a family reunion at Walt Disney World in 2009. We were so excited, but kept thinking about how far away it seemed. As time seems to do, it flew by, and before we knew it we were in Florida!

This was my mother-in-law, Kelli's side of the family. All of her siblings and their families, plus Grandma spent a week at the Saratoga Springs Resort in Orlando. What a fabulous trip that was! There were at least 30 of us there, and we had so much fun together. It was such a treat having everyone together. Our families are very spread out at the moment with families living in Virginia, Maryland, Utah, and Oregon, so getting everyone together is not an easy task. Thankfully, Aunt Tammy was the family coordinator, setting up everything from our accommodations, to park tickets, to special events. She was amazing, and made everything go so smoothly for all of us. It was a trip that we will never forget, and one that we are incredibly grateful to have been part of. Here are some of the highlights from the trip.

This was the beautiful Saratoga Springs Resort. They had 2 and 3 room villas that we shared with other family members. It also came with a kitchen, living room, and dining room.

All the cousins, ready to go out for the first day in the parks.

Our family- Noelle, Kasey, Skyler, Dad B., and Mom B. (we were just missing Niki).

Our first day in the parks started with a Safari ride in Animal Kingdom. It was incredible to see the different kinds of animals that Disney has there.

This was the tree of life in Animal Kingdom. The details in this tree are breathtaking. If you look closely you can see an incredible number of animals all carved into the tree.

Skyler braving Expedition Everest. You can see him waving- he's in the first full car.

Skyler and Noelle on the way down- still on Expedition Everest. Skyler has both hands up in the air (and he's wearing a blue shirt).

The family on one of the roaring rapids water rides. Skyler and Uncle Steve are waving to the camera. Noelle, Aunt Michele, Courtney, and Taylor are hiding in their ponchos. Dad (Ken) is drenched in his blue shirt.

Skyler, Kasey, Grandma Karen, Dad, Noelle, and Mom posing with the elephant after eating at the Rainforest Cafe.

The oh-so beautiful Cinderella Castle. I would LOVE to live there!!

Main Street Disney decked out for Christmas.

The men of the family starting their journey on Splash Mountain.

Getting ready to go down the very steep drop on Splash Mountain.

They survived! From back to front: Tanner, Parker, Uncle Greg, Skyler, Uncle Steve, Garrett, Uncle Brian, Josh, and Uncle Mike.

The happy Bradbury's donning our stylish 3-D glasses. We were about to go on Toy Story Mania, the coolest arcade ride EVER!!

This was, without a doubt, the best part of our trip to Disney! The Osborne Family Lights Display spanned a couple blocks in Hollywood Studios. Everywhere you looked, on every building and light post, was nothing but Christmas lights. It was the most incredible lights display we had ever seen. The best part was when music would play and the lights were timed to "dance" to the music. Amazing!!!

THANKSGIVING WITH THE WILLARD'S

We absolutely loved the 3 years we spent in Indiana! Despite the fact that they were a bit stressful (Skyler in law school- Kasey in her first years of teaching) they were some of the greatest years we've ever had. That was in large part due to the wonderful friends that we made while living there. The Willard's, Will and Julie, still live in northern Indiana, while the Sechrest's, Nate and Alayna, live in Utah now. Those couples quickly became our best friends, and helped make our years there so memorable. The wonderful part about these friendships is that we don't have to live in the same state in order to keep our friendship alive and well. We miss our friends tremendously and would love to see the day that we could live in the same city again.

When we went to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving we knew that we were only a few hours away from seeing Will and Julie. Thankfully, Mom was kind enough to loan us her car (we convinced her to make the drive with us, too!) and we met the Willard's halfway between Racine and Granger, IN. We ended up somewhere in Illinois, and thoroughly enjoyed getting to visit with them for a few hours. Will and Julie have two amazing kids that we consider another niece and nephew. Just as we miss seeing our own nieces and nephews, we miss seeing Hannah and Hayden, too.

What a beautiful thing friendships are. The Lord knows there are times in your life when you might not have your family in close proximity to you, so he sends the greatest friends who truly become your family. That's a precious thing to me, and I will be forever grateful for that.

Hannah and Will pose with their "cheesy smiles."

Julie and Hannah show off their "Wild One" hats. We met at Buffalo Wild Wings, a fabulous restaurant that we don't have around Woodbridge.

Hayden and Skyler giving their sweet smiles. Hayden was wearing his "Uncle Sky Shirt." Sky's favorite- a short sleeved button down in the cutest color.

Hayden wasn't lucky enough to be eating the fabulous boneless wings that we all enjoyed. Skyler's getting practice in the feeding department.

Kasey and Hannah. This is one of the first pictures I've seen of Hannah without her "cheesy smile."

Uncle Sky giving Hannah a lift.

In the parking lot before we handed the kids back over to their parents. We offered to let Hannah and Hayden come back to Virginia with us, promising that we would eventually return them. Sadly, that didn't happen. :-) Now, if I could only convince my siblings to let me take some of my nieces and nephews home after Christmas, I'd be one happy lady!

WALKING IN A WINTER WONDERLAND!

Being from Wisconsin and Utah, Skyler and I don't think it odd when we have a forecast calling for 8 inches of snow in a day. That probably wouldn't even earn a snow day in Wisconsin. When we lived in Alexandria last year, we were shocked that a snow day was called with less than 2 inches of snow on the ground.

Imagine our surprise when we started hearing news reports a few days ago calling for 5-8 inches of snow on Friday night (December 18). That's enough to throw any Virginian into a panicked frenzy. It just kept getting better, though. 12-15 inches were then forecasted for Saturday, with an additional 2-4 on Saturday night. Based on the behavior of our fellow Virginian's, you would have seriously thought we were preparing for the worst natural disaster in the earth's history. Gas stations had cars lined up for a mile. Stores were being emptied of milk, bread, eggs, and toilet paper. As one of our neighbors said, "I guess they're going to be making a lot of french toast." It was complete and total chaos.

We thought that last year's snow accumulations (less than 5 inches all winter) were going to become the norm for our area. We never had more than a dusting of snow, and we lived in an apartment for 4 years. So, the only thing that we were out at the stores looking for was a shovel. Oh, the chaos that I witnessed. If it weren't for the fact that I really did need a shovel, it would be have been incredibly humorous. Home Depot had a line of over 50 people anxiously waiting for the next shipment of shovels to come in, since all the shovels had disappeared from the store earlier in the day. I had a kind worker approach me and say, "Don't bother waiting in this line. I really don't think the shipment's getting here anytime soon, so you might want to get to another store before this line of people does." Off to Lowe's I went, only to find that they were out of all salt, shovels, and every snowblower in the store. No luck anywhere else, so we just shrugged and figured that a neighbor would have one that we could borrow.

Well, the December Snow Storm ended up being the Blizzard of 2009. It was record breaking and crazy!!! Here's a picture of what we woke up to early on Saturday morning.

Compare that to the next picture. This is the winter that we were used to last year.

So, the forecast was correct, and we were here for history in the making. We had no idea what kind of beating were in for, though, on Saturday. We found a neighbor who was kind enough to loan us his extra shovel, and that saved us. He helped Skyler dig out the driveway, and we were so grateful for that. After he left, we noticed that our neighbors who live in the tan house weren't home. Thinking they had already left for the holidays Skyler suggested that we shovel their driveway and walkway. I went across the street to borrow another shovel from the neighbors directly across from us, and we went to work unburying the driveway of our friends.

While we were out there, we noticed the neighbors kiddy corner from us outside shoveling as well. They had only one shovel, so they kept trading off the shoveling duties. We were done with our friend's house, so Skyler walked over and introduced himself to the neighbors we hadn't met. As we were talking, Skyler started helping the neighbor dig his way out. As they were doing that, I was shoveling out the house directly across from us, since her husband was out of town and she has two little girls to watch out for. By the time we were done with that side of the street it looked like our house had never been shoveled. Without any prompting, our neighbor followed Skyler to our house and we all started shoveling.

This became the pattern for the rest of the day. Our neighbors in the tan house came home from a trip around 1 p.m., and the rest of the day consisted of 4 neighbors helping each other out by going from house to house to shovel each family out. That process repeated several times that day, as the wind grew stronger and stronger!

I am so touched by that story for several reasons: 1) We hadn't met all of the neighbors we worked with that day, but what a fabulous way to meet them. 2) We forged instant friendships because we labored together, out of concern for another family's well being. 3) Trying to keep up with all the snow that fell this weekend was such a daunting task. To have been done by one person, or just one family would have been near impossible. 4) We got to know the backgrounds of our sweet neighbors, and it made us like them even more. 5) Looking back at this weekend really gets me choked up. Being in a blizzard like that, being almost completely home-bound, could make anyone feel so alone. We're not alone, though. We have neighbors looking out for us, and we're looking out for them. Though our bodies are physically exhausted and hurting because of the constant shoveling that went on, I will cherish this as one of the greatest moments we've ever had.

And now...the evidence of this lovely Blizzard:

Our backyard. This was in the afternoon on Saturday, and you can see the silt fence getting more buried by the minute.

This is our front walkway. We had finished shoveling not 10 minutes earlier, and this is what happened in the next 10 minutes.

Our poor little trees were just getting battered in the snow.

Skyler taking a break to pose for the camera (he's even smiling after all that shoveling).

The snow was pelting us in the face at times, which made seeing anything quite the difficult task.

Skyler conquering the snow!

Our street covered in a beautiful white! Most of our neighbors were either like us and didn't own a shovel OR they didn't know to keep up with the shoveling throughout the day because an incredible number of people were outside today trying to dig themselves out from a weekend of snow. Not fun.

Our snow pile that kept getting bigger and bigger. In the background is one of our kind neighbors that we met for the first time this weekend.

The front of our house with a look we had never seen before-- snow covered!

Our mailbox. Surprise, surprise. No mail came on Saturday.

My happy snowman braving the cold on our front step.

The gorgeous scene we woke up to this morning. Perfect, glistening white snow.

No, these are not animal tracks. They're human. After we finished the final round of shoveling this morning, Skyler had the bright idea to have a race around the house. Me being the bright one that I am said, "You mean, in the snow?" I finally agreed and we started our race around the house. My one stipulation was that Skyler was not allowed to throw any snow balls at me while racing or push me over in the snow to try and get ahead.

This is at the back of the house, only being halfway done with our race. Since Skyler thought I was going to slow he agreed to give me a 10 second head start. I took off running at full speed (with snow much higher than my knees), fully thinking I was actually going to beat him to the front of the house.

Boy, was I mistaken! As soon as my 10 second lead was up my leg completely sunk into the snow, and I was stuck. I was trying my best to get out as my wonderful husband came up behind me and tackled me. I flopped face first into the snow, with my leg still sunk below me. Two things from "A Christmas Story" come to mind. First was when the kid got his tongue stuck to the flagpole and he was yelling, "Thtuck, thtuck, THTUCK!" Second was when Randy was pushed over into the snow and he said, "Hey kid! I can't get up. I CAN'T GET UP!" Needless to say, Skyler one that race. It was actually the most fun we had all day!

And finally- what a perfect way to end the Blizzard of 2009 adventures. The calm after the storm.

"CHRISTMAS TIME IS HERE!

...Happiness and cheer! Fun for all that children call their favorite time of year! " If you started singing the melody when you read those lyrics then you definitely grew up with the same wonderful Christmas t.v. specials that we did. The Charlie Brown Christmas Special will always have a special place in my heart. I guess I'm still one of those 'children' who will always consider this my favorite time of year. I love that Thanksgiving is in November. We're already contemplating the many things that we're thankful for, and then we end with Christmas; continuing that attitude of gratitude and giving thanks for the most important gift in our life- Our Savior.

Christmas is such an incredible time of year. I'm always impressed by the special spirit that is felt during Christmastime. People are more inclined to show random acts of kindness, people are usually more friendly, and families can't wait for the time that they can get together to celebrate. It's special moments like those that make me think of the last verse of "Christmas Time Is Here."

Christmas time is here. We'll be drawing near.

Oh, that we could always see such spirit through the year.

Oh, that we could always see such spirit through the year.

We couldn't wait to decorate the house for Christmas. The decorations, to me, act as a great reminder that we need to slow down and take in all the joyous things that Christmas has to offer. Here are some pictures of our decorated house (snowmen and all)!

The garland that adorns the railings in the entryway.

We were going to wait until after Christmas to get a tree (since they'll typically go on sale) but we found one on sale a few weeks ago, and we couldn't pass it up! It was so fun to put on ornaments that our parents gave to us, ones that we've collected since we've been married, and several that my students have given me over the years. Each ornament has a story behind it, making them all the more special to place on the tree.

Each of my snowman friends has a special place in the house. Some people put up a Christmas Village, while I put up a snowman village.

These happy characters are in the living room, greeting visitors as they walk in the front door.

These 3 snowmen (well, technically 5) earned a spot under the Christmas tree this year. On the left is the snowman that sings and skis! My nephew, Alex, would always want to play with it when he came to my parent's house. He was only a few years old at the time, and I loved seeing his face light up whenever we let him play with it. On the far right is a snowman my Mom made several years ago. At that time I don't think she had any idea that one of her daughters would love snowmen as much as I do. The snowman family in the middle speaks for itself. When we went to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving we had to make a stop at Walgreens. Oh, the joy I felt when we walked in and instantly spotted this beauty! Skyler put it the best when he said, "It's the 3 things that you love the most...#1 Family, #2 The Green Bay Packers, and #3 Snowmen. Life is good!