Merry Ho Ho's & Happy Ding Dong's!!

WOW! It has been an eventful week!

Well, if you haven't seen it or yours was lost in the US mail (as many things have been so far this season)... here is our Christmas Card this year. Since you can't read the bottom corner, it says:

"Wishing you the very best of

everything this holiday season.

Merry Christmas and God Bless!

~Paul & Alicia Jacobson"

Well, we have had 3 days of Christmas this year, because we were sticking to the typical "McClees" tradition of Christmas Eve gift opening and "Jacobson" tradition of Christmas morning gift opening and dinner celebration. Well, due to the blizzard conditions in the great white north (aka Seattle), Steve & Kerry's flight got cancelled and John & Mark no longer wished to drive in the weather's dangerous conditions... so we sent gifts up to them and vice versa their gifts were sent down here - but they didn't show up until today. As soon as Paul got home from work, he wanted to open more gifts and have our "third Christmas!!" Not only that, but yesterday we had a full on turkey dinner with all the trimmings, and Uncle Jim, Aunt Judy, and Auntie Michaele came over to enjoy it with us!

CHRISTMAS #1 - "McCLEES CHRISTMAS" - Christmas Eve night

Tree photo #1

Really mom? Cashmere? Mmmmm... so soft!

Legos and Wii! Nothing goes better together!

Wii game, DVDs, and new cozy PJs!

Some light reading... OK, so some of us do more intellectual reading than others... :P

CHRISTMAS #2 - "PandA CHRISTMAS" - Christmas morning

Tree photo #2

She looks like a pink nightmare!

Paul looks like a happy 8 year old, opening up his Zune MP3 player!

And Alicia looks like a 3 year old, opening up her Wii Fit from Santa!

Christmas breakfast with danishes - ham in the eggs - a new twist to the ol' favorite

Playing with our new Wii toy

Holiday PJs, toes, fingers, and Wii Fit balance board

CHRISTMAS #3 - "JACOBSON CHRISTMAS" - Earlier today, the 26th

Mmmm... birch bark!

Tree photo #3, after boxes arrived today! ;)

Hung the stockings back up with care

Discontinued balls...

Wii game (a penguin one from Mom 0024, imagine that!) and DVDs

Paul's new Man Utd jersey

Opening the last gift... finally! ;)

Well God (and Santa!) has been very good to us this year. Even though I was laid off from my job and the economy / interior design business is down the drain, He had a plan to give Paul a new job and managerial position to balance out the loss we were feeling in my salary. Through his new job, we were also blessed with health insurance (very important to me) and a transportation allowance. On the side, we were still able to afford the mortgage on our home, plus we even started up life insurance this year (wow, we are so becoming adults!). Also, thank you to everyone for all the Christmas gifts! We will enjoy them, and hopefully you'll do the same with what we sent you! :)

So rather than looking back on the year and regretting what we didn't have, we are counting our many blessings! We hope your year has also been as much of a blessing to you and your family, and truly cannot thank everyone enough for being such an important part of our lives and support in this last year. To celebrate, we are having a small, casual get-together on New Year's Eve with some close friends, couples, and their kids that live around in our area. I'm sure the Christmas meatballs and BBQ Lil' smokies will be making an appearance as well as a bottle or two of Asti (my fave)! :)

We hope your Christmas was all that you wished for and full of family & friends!

May 2009 bring you much peace and prosperity, health and happiness!

(Will post photos from our New Year's Eve party

after it happens next week... so stay tuned!)

Posted by: ~A*