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*

The East Coast Jacobsons

Hello everybody, this is our cousin Matt Jacobson.

Up close and personal so you get to know him well.

And here are the newlyweds.

Tim Jacobson (brother of Matt) and wife Christin.

Newlyweds again (in color)

Uncle Dave, Tim, and Matt.

Arriving in Philidelphia PA on halloween night, Paul and I rented a car to make the 45 minute drive over to Marlton, NJ where the wedding festivities were taking place. We made it that night to their rehearsal dinner (nice of them to invite us out-of-towners!), which was a costume party - little did we know. So we dressed up as - you got it! - TRAVELERS! That night we drove about an hour south into Hockessin, DE to stay with Matt & Alisha (that's right, we have a second Alisha Jacobson in the family - which is why she goes by Alisha #2, at least around me).

Paul & Matt bonding over Guitar Hero.

The next day for the wedding festivities, we got there a little early since we needed to follow M & A#2 (or MandA), who needed to be there early for photos. So we tooled around Marlton, ate some lunch (bad choice given the amount of food to come later that night), shopped at Trader Joe's, etc... We stumbled on this business park right near where the wedding location was, and decided to stop off and get some photos. The colors were to die for!

Mmmmmmmmm, mmmmmm... gorg!

PandA!

Their ceremony was short and sweet. They replied "I Do" and exchanged the rings simulaneously - no vows needed, it was just time to party!

Shortest ceremony ever! 5 minutes - tops!

Announcing the Mr. & Mrs.

First dance...

The 3 West Coast Jacobsons that could make it.

PandA!


Brothers... hmmm can you tell?


The Jacobson men (minus John & Mark...)


The Jacobson women - Alicia #1 with Alisha #2
(minus Kerry - it's really too bad she couldn't be there)

Gorgeous Autumn colored centerpieces!

Cake Topper - beautiful!

On a stunning (and scrumptious) cake!

More centerpieces... each one different.

All in all, it was a short trip, but we got to see family that we can't see all that often, and spend some quality time with them. We need to have another Jacobson wedding out here on the West Coast for them to come out and see all of us next time (hint, hint John & Mark!). ;)

Sunday morning we got up (relatively) early and Alisha had made us pumpkin pancakes! We were on our way up to Boston that day... longest 5 hour drive ever (because it took more like 6-1/2)!!! See next post for more...

Posted by: ~A*

Welcome to PandA-monium!

Welcome!
Well now, somehow you've managed to navigate your way to this beginner blog, hosted by Paul & Alicia. This blogging is all very new to us, so bear with us as we upload, link, html, post, and subsequently blog. Our lives aren't exactly the most interesting, but as most of our family and friends are WA-staters (with the exception of some in Beantown), we've finally felt compelled to post our updates online... so now family and friends can keep up with where we are and what we're doing with our lives. No, that doesn't mean that right now we have "news" to share, but if we do, you will be sure to find it here... please stay tuned and check back often, as we will try to keep it up to date, as best we can.
Welcome to our panda-monium!

~PandA
(get it?)