Another great giveaway!

I love this time of year in blogland.  There are so many creative folk out there and they are oh so generous!

Fee at Chipper Nelly is offering this great giveaway

Cross your fingers if you enter!

Great giveaway at Hearts & Bluebells

If you haven't checked out Thea's blog already, make it a must for today as she is having a great giveaway and it closes on Sunday. 

Are you all ready for Christmas?  The blogs are all so lovely at this time of year and I love reading your ideas. 

 I am in Toronto with my hubby this week as he has work here and I came along to see Adam & Alicia.  We had a lovely visit with them last night along with dinner, and I just had lunch with Adam today. I love spending time with my grown children - they are all such great adults and such good company!  

We are staying at the Delta Chelsea Hotel downtown and they are all decked out for Christmas.

The Eaton Centre is just around the corner and they are all decked out as well.  There is a Swarovski  crystal tree in the mall right outside the store and it is constantly changing colour.

This is the view from underneath the tree looking up.

If you look closely, you can see the hanging swarovski crystals.

This tree is outside the Eaton Centre at Dundas Square

It also changes colour

They also have these giant reindeer throughout the whole mall.

Don't you just love this time of year?!

Happy 31st sweetheart!

We celebrated our 31st anniversary on November 6th.  Technically, our trip to Maine in October is our gift to each other, but this year we also ordered a custom framed print in Utah and had it shipped to Maine.  

This is where we were married 31 years ago and we had our names and wedding date embossed in the corner.

I feel so blessed to have this wonderful man as my eternal companion. He is and always has been, my best friend.

I don't think 31 years looks bad on us at all!  Here's to another 31 and more sweetheart!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Well, at least it is at our house!

Our Christmas tree went up November 11th and we are all in the Christmas spirit here now!  Here are a few photos from around our home.

 Our decorations waiting to adorn the tree.

I made these tontuu (elf) hats when we were first married.  In Finland (where Wendell served a mission for our church in 1979-81) everyone wears these at Christmas, so we wear them now when we trim our tree.  Here is Alex, Rebekah's boyfriend modelling one.

And here's our little Norah in hers.

The finished tree!

Some wonderful smelling potpouri

Rebekah & Alex

Here's the finished Christmas quilt that I made

Our gifts are all wrapped.  I just have a few homemade things to whip up and then the baking, which will be less than previous years.  I am so excited as our whole family will be together on Christmas day this year.  Adam & Alicia usually arrive Dec 27th, but this year they will come on Christmas Eve and be here for a few days!  It will be wonderful!

Three days after "Sandy"

Well, we are still here to tell the tale, and what a tale it was!  This storm had such a huge scope and left so much damage that I don't know if the U.S. was really ready for it!

We were very lucky where we are in Maine, but other parts of the East coast weren't as fortunate.  We kept a very close watch on the storm in the afternoon and evening and well into the early hours of Tuesday morning.  The winds and the rain were really strong here and caused some minor damage to some seafront properties, but we were fine.  We didn't lose power and were able to watch the weather channel all day.  It was kind of surreal watching videos about NY and Connecticut while listening to the waves crash and the winds howl, knowing that even though it sounded bad outside our window, it was relatively little compared to other areas. Even our part of the world in Ontario didn't escape.  Ottawa had heavy winds that night and Toronto, where our oldest son Adam lives, had very strong winds, and a woman was killed as a sign fell from a building because of the wind and struck her head.  This happened five minutes away from Adam's place.

Here are a few photos after the fact.  We didn't want to go out taking photos during all this.

 

This is the B&B where we stay.  As you can see, the only thing which separates us from the ocean are the beautiful dunes.  They are a real protection in storms. You can see, that during the storm, the water level came right up to the bench.  In normal days it doesn't come near that and when we come during the summer, you still have lots of beach area left at high tide - not so during hurricane Sandy!

This grey building is also ocean front and as you can see, it lost a lot of shingles.

These waves had calmed down a lot, but they still look like they are boiling up to me!

 

If you look very closely at the previous photo in the middle of the picture, you will be able to see a surfer.  Believe it or not, there were a few surfers out in their wet suits this morning and we watched this guy catch an unbelievable wave!

This beach is very sandy normally, with very little seaweed - not this morning though, all kinds of the stuff had washed ashore!

Dan Fogelberg wrote a song called "the sand & the foam".  He lived in Maine and we love to listen to his music.  This photo reminded me of him.

And finally, I couldn't resist these two photos of Wendell.  I think he looks like Moses, about ready to part the Red Sea!  He found that piece of driftwood washed up on the beach.  I am not joking when I say that he has it drying out in our room right now and plans to put it in his home office when we get back!

Thirty one years ago on November 6th we were married "For time & all eternity" in the LDS Washington temple (pictured here)

Our church has temples all over the world and yesterday we went to the temple in Boston.  Here is a photo I took when we arrived.

It was a very grey day and we were still feeling the effects of the storm, but inside all was calm and peaceful.  We always spend some time here when we come to Maine on our own in October every year.

I'll upload a few more photos tomorrow.  Right now, it's time to shut down the computer and relax.