Christmas in Pictures

 We had a fun Christmas season this year, as I hope you did too.  As I type that statement, I am reminded that Christmas isn't just about fun. It's about worshiping Jesus. Tate and I had a conversation about that one day when we were listening to "Kids Christmas music" on Pandora. I said to Tate, "You know what's sad? This whole time we've been listening to music, there hasn't been a single song about Jesus. They are all about Santa. Christmas isn't about Santa. It's about worshiping Jesus." Tate replied, "So, they are worshiping Santa?" The wisdom of a child! That being said, I hope that your Christmas was more about Jesus than it was about anything else.

After the Christmas decorations went up, we had a little photo shoot in the house to try to catch some pictures that were acceptable for the Christmas card. These are ones that didn't make the cut for one reason or another. 

Love this one of Tate and Norah as it captures a moment of sibling affection. They get along most of the time, but hugs like this often end up on the floor in a wrestling match, and wrestling matches between these two often eventually end in tears.
I tried to use a prop for Anja's picture, but if you can read her mind, she is thinking, "It looks so tasty! I just want to eat it!" We hung the reindeer back on the Christmas tree before it became her afternoon snack.

On Christmas morning, the 5 of us exchanged gifts at our house, left the gifts strewn about the living room and packed into the car for our week long Christmas celebration. Our first stop on our Christmas trip was Grandma Lynette and Grandpa Jim's house for a couple of days. We celebrated with "the cousins" on Christmas day....and of course had to get the obligatory picture in front of the Christmas tree!  

Every year we eat some of the standard Christmas meal dishes like lefse, Swedish sausage, rice pudding, sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes, along with a few other things. This year I made a new Christmas dish. Actually it's an old favorite of my Grandpa's. Fruit soup. Lots of prunes and other dried fruit cooked to mush (well, apparently I cooked it a little too mushy according to Grandpa. Oh well, I'll try again next year). If you'd like, I can send you the recipe so you can try it too!

Have you ever given a gift that was a hit? That was this year with my niece Maddy. This was the first present she opened, and she read it the rest of the day. We had to remind her every time it was her turn again to open another present. It sure doesn't happen with every gift you give, but when it does, it is priceless!

Our next leg of the journey was to Grandma Sharon and Grandpa Gerry's house in Chicago. If you've read my blog for a while, you'll know that we aren't all that fond of road trips, but this year exceeded our expectations. We made it down there in a decent amount of time with relatively little crying (and no puking). 

We celebrated Christmas on Saturday with the whole family. There were lots of presents, good food and good company. 

It's fun to watch the kids play together as they get older. Our niece, Noelle was born in May and Norah was born just 5 months later, so I'm sure they'll have many memorable times together! I've apologized several times for naming Norah with the same first 2 letters, because it gets confusing sometimes! Anja is starting to want to join in the fun too!

For some reason this year we've broken more ornaments than all the other years combined. One included a glass ball that was filled with thousands of tiny red beads. I'm still finding them around the house and I'm sure I will for a long, long time. So, last night as we were all doing our thing around the house, I came around the corner to find Anja tugging at the string of red berries on the Christmas tree. The tree was beginning to teeter and I caught it just before it hit the floor. Several ornaments fell off, but thankfully none of them broke and thankfully it didn't fall on top of Anja. I couldn't get it to stand up again, so I leaned it against the wall and decided to take care of it in the morning. Well, this morning when I went to take the decorations off of it, I attempted to set it up straight again so it would be easier to get the back ones off and this is what happened:

The tree is now all disassembled and ready to be put in the box until next year. It was pretty while it lasted. Our Christmas celebration ended with a bang this year! (Bad, bad joke. I know.)