A Christmas Eve Christmas

We had a very non-traditional Christmas this year. Toren's family was scheduled to fly out Christmas day for Las Vegas (in route to Lake Havasu, Arizona...we're 100% bummed that we couldn't join them), so we decided to celebrate Christmas Eve and Christmas Morning on the 24th.


To kick things off, we gathered in the dinning room, lit the fireplace, and enjoyed a delicious prime rib dinner by romantic candle light, accompanied by Josh Groban's magical voice on the CD player. After dinner we watched a short Church video of the Nativity story, and then Toren read the actual story to us out of the scriptures. Then, upholding the Forsberg tradition, we opened our Christmas Eve present, which, of course, was pajamas. We all changed into our new PJs and began celebrating Christmas Morning!


The gift opening was as exciting as ever. Toren and I got tickets to the play Wicked! I couldn't be more excited!! See the picture below for the present Toren was most excited about.

Toren's gift from Blair. Don't worry, it's only a matter of time before Bax devours it.

Baxter couldn't have been more happy shredding all the wrapping paper.

Our family. Notice the new PJs!

Santa's On His Way!

Even though night has yet to come in Oregon, I'm pretty sure Santa has already been busy delivering gifts for hours. He's already been to Asia, Europe and Africa, and right now he's in the South Sandwich Islands.

Click here to see for yourself where Santa is now.

The Arctic Blast

I mentioned in an earlier post that we were blessed with some snow here in the Northwest. Well, since then we've been DUMPED on (hence the cancelled flights and dramatic trip from Seattle to Portland)! Schools were in session only one half-day last week. Church has been cancelled the last two Sundays. Many stores in the mall were even closed!! Roads have been closed and chains, required. The news stations are calling it The Arctic Blast. At the house we got more than 18 inches! At first it was kind of exciting, but now we're just ready for it to melt.

One of the most important things to do during The Arctic Blast was make sure that the satellite dish was clear of ice and snow so we could all watch our favorite shows.

Here's one of the big trees in the backyard totally weighed down by all the snow.
The house. It doesn't look like we're living in Oregon, huh? Our poor van, which hasn't been driven in ages...
I wanted to post a couple videos of The Arctic Blast, but I can't get them uploaded properly. I'll try to post them later.

Weekend: The Bad News

Saturday night I got online to print our boarding passes for our 8:00 flight to Portland the next morning, just to find that our flight was cancelled (due to the snow). All the other flights to Portland that day were listed "On Time," so we were confident that we could go standby on one of the other flights. So, we arrived hopeful at the airport at 6:30 am Sunday. As soon as we walked through the doors, however, we realized our hope was short lived. Soon we discovered that the line to reschedule a cancelled flight (just on Alaska Airlines) was 6 hours long and we were 2 of hundreds who had a cancelled flight. We clearly didn't have 6 hours to wait in line, so we decided to proceed through security (where I had to throw away my new 10 oz bubble bath) and try to get on standby for another flight.

Once we got to the gate we waited in line to get a standby ticket. After an hour or so we were put on the standby list (which was now 45 people long) and wait. The next flight was scheduled to got out at 9:20.... then it was delayed to 10:20.... then 11:00..... then 11:30.... 11:55.... and, finally, 12:00pm. They boarded the flight and began boarding the standbys. We were minutes away from getting on the plane when the boarding agent made the announcement: our flight was delayed indefinitely due to freezing rain in Portland. We had been at the airport now for 6 hours with no luck. It was time for plan B.

My parents picked us up and we headed south in my Dad's 4x4 truck. The ride was snowy and took longer than normal, but at least we were making progress. Toren's parents met us in Kalama, Washington (about 1 hour north of Oregon City). We switched cars and my parents headed back to Seattle while we continued South. Our car was parked at the airport, and after we trudged through the parking lot in snow up to my knees, we found our Yukon surrounded in an inch of solid ice. Toren spent the next 30 minutes pounding and scraping off the ice. I spent the time thawing inside the car. After our 16-hour adventure, we finally made it home safe and sound.

I was too frustrated to take too many pictures, but this one shows how I felt when we arrived at the airport and saw our car.

Toren pounded the ice off with the end of a shovel. This is about 20 minutes into the de-icing.

Weekend: The Good News

Last Friday Toren and I flew up to Seattle for my cousin's wedding. She was married Saturday morning and, despite the freezing weather outside, we took a few pictures before heading to the luncheon and then reception. It was a beautiful wedding and we were so happy to be there.

Carmen and Seth

Since we were in town for the wedding (and not able to drive back up due to work and the weather), we decided to have Gailey Christmas that night. We read the nativity story out of the bible and then enjoyed our time opening presents.

Toren got a new (and much needed!) wallet. We can now retire his ugly purple one. I got a papering set which included a relaxing neck warmer, bubble bath, lotion, choclates, etc. And we both got a Skookie....and we were thrilled!! I think Skookie stands for skillet cookie. With the Skookie we will be able to make giant cookies and more!

While we were enjoying the wedding and Christmas, the snow was piling up. By the end of the night my parents house was covered in a nice layer of snow. It was beautiful, but it sure caused problems for us the next day (see The Bad News post above).

Gingerbread Barn and Snow!!

Last weekend was our ward Christmas party. I was actually quite excited about it because, instead of a potluck and talent show, we were making gingerbread houses! Kalen and I decided to team up to make one HUGE gingerbread house...and pack as much frosting and candy on to it as possible. It ended up coming out more like a gingerbread barn, but we were pretty happy with ourselves.

You probably can't tell, but a few pieces of candy are missing....can you guess who ate them, after we specifically asked him not to touch the gingerbread barn?

Demolishing....

...and feasting!
It was delicious, though I think I ate too much because about an hour later I wasn't feeling so good.

Then on Sunday morning we woke up to a festivous miracle!! It had already snowed several inches and it didn't appear to be stopping any time soon. It was beautiful. This was Baxter's first experience in the snow. At first, he was a little freaked out. I let him outside, but he wouldn't get off the deck. Finally, I had to pick him up and throw him into the snow. At first he seemed paralyzed. He just wouldn't move. He then proceeded to tip-toe in the snow, sniffing it was he went. And then....he went wild! He started running all over the yard, just absolutely loving the snow. From then on, he would come inside just to warm up for a minute and then beg to go outside again. It was so funny!

Toren and I bundled up Sunday afternoon to take the dogs for a winter walk around the neighborhood. Yes, Toren is wearing snowboarding goggles.

Scuba Diving

We were lucky enough to go scuba diving many times during our 2 weeks, which meant that we saw TONS of cool things. My dad has an underwater casing for his digital camera, and he took lots of cool pictures. The pictures below came from all the different dives we went on. The diving in Cozumel was the best diving I've experienced so far.

Pictures underwater are not the most flattering. Here's me and Toren. Look at the chunk of hair floating on the top of my head. It kind of looks like a flame. Haha.

And we're heading off into the blue to see some amazing things. Toren is on the left and I'm on the right.

One (of many) turtle sighting.

These are squid. You'd almost mistake them for some weird fish, huh? Look at their big googly eyes.

A big school of fish.

Lobsters. Sorry the picture is sideways, and I'm just too lazy to upload it again.

I think this is a cow fish, but I could be wrong.

Another turtle.

Can't remember the name of this fish, but I thought they were pretty cool.

John (my brother) just getting out of an underwater cavern.

I'm not sure what this one is either, but it's a pretty freaky picture. He looks hungry!

A stingray and some big fish. Apparently the fish like to hang out by the stingrays because when the rays swim they churn up stuff in the sand that the fish like to eat.

Another stingray swimming away from us.

Again, I'm not sure what this fish is.

John hanging out by some sea sponges and coral.

Can you see the fish in this picture?

Another turtle. This one was rather angry at us. I think he was trying to sleep.

John and me under the water.

Another ray.

Look mom, no hands!

A spotted eel.

An octopus! This was probably my favorite thing to see.

The octopus even climbed out of his burrow and walked along the coral for us! It was incredible!!

And that's a pretty good overview of the things we saw. The only things we did see but didn't get pictures of were some barracudas and a nurse shark. It was really some incredible diving. Toren did a little more diving than the rest of us because he got his Advanced Diver certification while down there. He went to depths of 120 feet and even got to do an amazing ship wreck dive!

Cozumel Island

After a wonderful week at Xpu-Ha Palace, we packed our bags again and headed to the island of Cozumel for our second wonderful week! To get to the island we had to take a shuttle to Playa del Carmen and then catch a ferry across to Cozumel. It was an exhausting move, but once we got to our resort, we knew we were going to have a fabulous week. We decided to spend this week in Cozumel because the scuba diving sites near the island are the best in all of Mexico (pictures to come soon).

We didn't actually visit Margaritaville, but we thought we made a perfect Frankie & Lola.

They had these little horse and buggy taxis cruising all up and down the main drag of the island. Notice the sombrero on the horse's head. Pretty funny.

After a long day of scuba diving, John and Toren found the perfect way to relax: video games.

One of the most beautiful views off the island.

The island is so small that many people drive scooters instead of cars. We decided to rent a scooter for our last 2 days on the island. It was exhilarating to zip around the island with the wind breezing through my hair.

Toren, looking very much like a native.

Dinner was on of my favorite parts of each day. At the Cozumel Palace (our resort) we had 4 different restaurants to choose from each night. They were all SOO delicious. This is us getting prepared to eat at the outside grill.

This is us on our last night. We walked around town for one last time to enjoy the warm evening temperatures.