Little Joys of Christmastime

 

When there's fog and ice

and the radio stations and phone calls are saying to stay off the roads...
When plans were made to travel for family Christmas,
but now are delayed...
What do we do?

 

- sing Christmas songs -

- play board games -

- eat Christmas cookies -

- test out the roads and pick up egg nog shakes -
- stoke the fire in the basement -
- watch a Christmas movie -

and wait in anticipation for our Christmas celebration tomorrow! :)




(here's our little board game family... guess who won?  It's no surprise to us - he's undefeatable hint hint)


. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


Yesterday, our neighbor, Vanessa, came over for cookie and bread baking.
 
Listening to Bing Crosby Christmas music while singing along and dancing in the kitchen definitely stirs up that Christmasy feeling!



 

 

 

 

 

~Eliza

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Christmas!

I'm sure you are thinking "What? They are posting on Christmas at the end of March!" Well we are! We just had our Christmas celebration with my Mom's brother Randy.

Because of the snowstorm at Christmas, Uncle Randy wasn't able to make it for Christmas, so we had him over now for a very belated celebration.

We had a lot of fun playing the Wii games that he brought.

These pictures are probably very boring to you, but we had fun, because we never grew up playing video games. Needless to say, we were pretty bad at it, but I think we improved at the end of the weekend. Thanks Uncle Randy for bringing it!

*****

Here is a picture of Mom and Uncle Randy.

A little sibling rivalry?

I guess driving a race car is pretty tough, because my tounge is out. I was concentrating! I think my average score was about 11th place out of 12! The next day we all were wondering why our arms were so sore! We figured it out, it was tennis and bowling. Yep, it was a tough weekend!

~Katelyn

Over the river and through the woods...

...to Grandmother's house we go!!!

We decided to brave the icy roads and head out to our Grandparents' house on Saturday. We found out just how icy the roads truly were when we saw a car ahead of us spin on the ice and slide into the ditch!!! Yikes! Dad drove slowly and very carefully and we made it safe and sound! When we got there, Grandma and Grandpa kept saying how happy they were that we were able to come and that they'd felt so lonely on Christmas. It was great to be able to spend a little Christmas with them...we loved it!

Since only about half of the crew was able to make it to Christmas (my aunt, uncle, and cousins, and other uncle all lived too far away to be able to drive in the bad weather), we certainly had plenty of food to eat for Christmas dinner!

Grandma made a delicious meal for us of Swedish Meatballs, scalloped potatoes, corn, peas, squash, cranberry sauce, lefse, flatbread, and sparkling juice!

Here is Grandma's beautifully decorated table, ready for the meal!

---You've probably noticed by now that we have a few Scandinavian traditions :)---

After dinner, we opened our presents...

...and then went back to the table for dessert: Grandma's traditional "Grasshopper Pie"

Yummy!!!

(One year, when I was little, Dad told me that there were real grasshoppers in it!!! I don't think I ate quite as much of it that year! ;)

The pie also served as a birthday cake for Dad who turned 50!!!

Later that evening, we sat around the living room and listened to stories from Grandma and Grandpa about their Christmas memories from when they were little. It was so much fun! I just loved being able to catch a glimpse of what their lives were like and learning a little more family history!

With the help of the weather we were able to convince Mom and Dad to spend the night ;) (it actually didn't take much convincing this time) and we headed home after church and a scrumptious Sunday brunch the next morning.

THE END

(I just had to add that, because it sounded like I was telling a story ;)

~Eliza