As Seen on Candy Cane Lane

When Steve and I moved into our house a year and a half ago, we had no clue what we were getting ourselves into during Christmas! Being out-of-towners, we had no idea what Candy Cane Lane was, what it all meant, or even where it was located. The previous owners of our house must have seen "suckers" written all over our faces when we did our first walk through.

For all of you who were in the same boat we were 2 years ago, Candy Cane Lane is:

*a 4 block Christmas wonderland (think: Christmas with the Kranks)

*an effort that was started by neighbors over 20 years ago to raise money for the MACC Fund (Midwest Athletes Against Childhood Cancer) As of tonight, they've already collected more than $30,000 this year!

*a Milwaukee tradition that begins the Friday after Thanksgiving and goes through Christmas

*an opportunity for us to become creative in things like: getting home after work, leaving the house in the evening, and attempting to not feel like zoo animals as carload after carload (and the occasional bus) of people drive by and look at our Christmas lights.

Candy Cane Lane really is quite the phenomonen-and it's amazing to see all the decorations that the neighbors put up! And it all goes to a really great cause (although our accountant did say that our December electric bill does not count as a charitable donation). Each night a different neighbor plays Santa, and local "celebrities" (radio station dj's, the Racing Sausages, etc.) come to help collect money. In addition to collecting money for the MACC Fund, they also collect non-perishable food for the Hunger Task Force. Tonight I walked a bag of food up to the collection point and took some pictures of what Candy Cane Lane looks like tonight. Sorry about some of the blurry pictures! It was a little cold, and my hands got a little shaky! The West Allis Fire Department was helping take the collections tonight.

And while our house isn't quite decorated to the extreme as some of the others, we hope that it gets the message across that Christ is our light, and our reason for celebrating this season.

We hope you have a wonderful Christmas!!

A Very Packer Thanksgiving

Since we're a week away from Christmas, it's really only appropriate that we do a Thanksgiving post, right? :)

This year we hosted Thanksgiving at our house for the very first time (sort of!). My brother had to stay in Wisconsin because of a hockey tournament the day after Thanksgiving, and my cousin Daniel was going to pick up some extra hours of work while he was on break from Concordia. Steve had been busy working in Atlanta, helping to do some clean-up after their flooding and was getting just the week of Thanksgiving back at home, and since we felt there were some things that needed to get done around the house (think winterizing...), we also had made the decision to stay home for Thanskgiving. And since a frozen Tundra Thanksgiving didn't really sound like too much fun for the St. Louis crew, we had a Thanksgiving feast for the 4 us! And to say it was a feast would be an understatement! I'm not quite sure what any of us were thinking when we put together the menu, but boy did we have leftovers!

The whole day was really very relaxing. We had most of the food either cooking or ready to go before the start of the Packers game and we were able to sit and watch the game while munching on some crackers, cheese and sausage. (What'da expect! We were having a very Packer/Wisconsin Thanksgiving!)

The table is set!

The boys go to work on the Turkey and the Duck

Mike takes care of pouring our wine and Steve's Miller High Life

Dinner is served! Buon Appetite!