But I'll take this relaxed Martin Luther King Day to do some retro updates for ya. First up: Christmas in Minnesota.
Our first Christmas celebration was with Grandma & Papa.
Guess who thought Christmas was lots of fun....these guys!
We ate, we opened, we laughed, we wii-ed...
We wanted to get a picture of the 3 cousins together-Greta, Wes, & Noah- but alas, the boys' sleep schedules were mismatched. Ah the joy of trying to photograph babies under 2...they must be perfectly napped, perfectly fed, and perfectly dry...a moment that is fleeting and rarely coincides with the other children in the bunch!
We were able to experience this joy again when we went for the annual Santa picture. We went in the morning. We fed Dubs some breakfast. We brought along the toys for distraction. Here's what we got:
And then Daddy worked his magic and Wesser eeked out a smile for us:
If you look closely, you can still see a big tear rolling down his cheek. Thank goodness for Daddy-magic, because Santa's elves weren't cutting it. The most hilarious thing about this picture to date is that I posted it on facebook and got 10x as many comments on Santa's "relaxed" attire than I did the smiling/crying kids. It seems that Santa in MN likes to break out his casual wear which offends some of our southern readers :). Southerners ARE sticklers for the correct attire.
On to our celebrations with Jay & Kelly and the rest of the Christiansen Crew:
We had some quiet small family time, opening gifts and having a traditional Christmas pizza for lunch. Quiet is relative, of course, when it comes to happy kids opening gifts. But a good morning of fun before we joined the larger Christiansen family for bowling, presents, dinner and singing. Greta won the bowling trophy (well, Daddy did but she's keeping it in her room).
It's a fun and rowdy group....we fit right in. We missed the Binnie Family, as Noah had a tough case of RSV (he's all better now), but otherwise it was a good day.
On to our family of 4 Christmas which we had on Christmas Eve morning (for fear that Christmas morning with Santa's arrival + Christmas day church would be too over the top):
G's big gifts were a scooter (once requested, now a source of fear...awesome) and a microphone for her "performances."
By far the favorite gift of the holiday season was Wesser's train table.
We have an awesome video of Wessy almost willing himself to fly down the stairs and to the side of his train table. We are still greeted most mornings with chants of "Open! Downstairs! TRAINS!" Yeah, he's a fan, which is good because it does take up half of our basement.
Christmas morning:
We were joined Christmas eve and Christmas morning by our beloved Aunt Jayne who makes everything more fun.
And so began the first set of Christmas celebrations...too good, too many toys, too much food and just the right amount of togetherness.
Most fun part of this Christmas: the kids are enjoying Christmas carols. Greta learned a few of them and we would sing them as our prayer at dinner time during Advent. It was really fun...nothing more beautiful than hearing our girl sing songs about baby Jesus. Also fun: Wes made (and is still making) carol requests...the favorite being "An-gels." He'll say "An-gels" in a sing songy voice and won't stop until he hears the first verse of Angels We Have Heard on High. It is awesome. The anticipation of the baby Jesus' arrival was really alive in our household this year with the advent calendar helping us recount the story and count down the days until Jesus was born. Joy upon joy....
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