Life goes on: Christmas 2011

Hard to believe that Christmas and New Years have already come and gone. I hardly took any pictures and definitely didn't do any blogging during December. We had a great holiday season even without getting to go home and visit our family. It was back and forth the entire month of checking for plane tickets. We even had someone else willing to flip the bill to fly us all back home for a few days, but the ticket prices were just too much to fly into Fargo (and anywhere remotely close). It would have cost around $4000.00 for all four of us to travel for only a couple of days, so we took a pass on it this year.
The kids and I had a good time baking cookies this year. We tried just a couple of them, but stretched it out into a few days. One night we made the dough and the next night we cut out the cookies and saved the decorating for another night. It was really nice to do it this way and keep the kids busy with activities at home each night. It was much better than cramming it all into one Saturday or Sunday.
Here are the very few pictures that I took of us decorating. Katelynn was not being to cooperative with her pictures, she said she was busy decorating! I went all out for them this time though: sprinkles, cinnamon sprinkles, frosting in different colors and icing with different tops to squeeze out for outlining. Dan walked in as I was mixing up the food coloring and frosting and said, isn't that gonna be really messy and a little much? I said, who cares, the kids will have fun and I will be the one cleaning it up anyway. So away they went decorating snowmen, bells, mistletoe, Santa, and gingerbread men. They immediately set aside the best ones for Santa.

We went to the mall one day to go take pictures with Santa and have the kids tell them what they wanted. Of course Katelynn changed her mind that day and said she wanted a pair of ice skates. She also mentioned that the mall Santa was not "The Real Santa" because he didn't know who Chippy our Elf on the Shelf was. She did believe that the mall Santa worked for Santa and her messages would still get to him.

Dan and I took the kids to the mall one day and we had an absolute great time ice skating. The kids were talking about for days before. Dan was probably more nervous than the kids were because he said he had never been skating before. I figured, or maybe more was hoping that it would be like riding a bike and I would be able to do it without falling on my keester! It was a small rink outside at the mall which made it pretty amazing to be outside for the kids first skating experience. The kids did great. They each got a hold of a little hamper/garbage and pushed it around the rink and round and round they went. The amazing part was there was no whining, no crying and no complaining about anything. It made a world of difference for all of us.

It was getting closer and closer to Christmas and presents and boxes were being dropped off on our front porch. Junior knew that Santa Claus came and dropped off presents, but you didn't get to see him. One night right before supper the doorbell rang. The kids ran to the door and I went and opened it and there was no one there. I dragged in 2 big boxes and announced "Presents" and Junior looked at me and said "Was that Santa"? I laughed so hard and said no baby that was UPS.

The night before Christmas Eve we were all hanging out downstairs and it was getting close to bed time and the kids asked if they could open up a present early. I am always excited about opening gifts so I looked at Dan and said sure why not, you can each open one. Of course after they had opened one they wanted to open - Just one more? They of course got the big N-O on that request.

Christmas Eve was filled with cleaning the house, taking baths, playing and cooking our big lasagna meal. The kids were bouncing off the walls and couldn't wait. They actually ate pretty good and made it through the meal before racing downstairs to open presents. Like every other year it doesn't take us long to rip through everything under the tree when you would expect it to take a couple of hours with the amount of gifts. We attempted to video chat with my parents and brother at my parents house, but it wasn't happening for us so we just talked that night. Dan spoiled me rotten this year even though we set a limit of $150.00. I first opened my traditional gifts of VS bras which I always love getting. The next 2 gifts were big surprises to me. I first opened a Kindle Fire. I loved this gift because he put thought into what to get me. I love to read books and he knows that I buy them, read them and keep them. I guess I am a book hoarder. He said we have no room for all of these books so here ya go. Although he didn't realize that I would still have to pay for the books I loved the gift. The last gift was a bit over the top. He bought me a new set of diamond earrings. I did end up returning the earrings and getting a diamond necklace because he had already bought me a pair for our 5 year anniversary and I had to explain to him that they meant more than getting a pair for Xmas to me. I loved all my gifts.

Christmas morning the kids did not get up at 5am, but it was early enough for us! The kids ran down the stairs and everyone had gifts from Santa in their stockings. The kids loved their gifts and so did Dan and I. We played and played and played until 11 am before even getting ready for the day. I was so excited that I had my Tablet from work home with me and we were able to video chat with the Dickhaus side and Trautner side of the family using Tango and even with Dan's family. It really made our Christmas this year to be able to say hello to everyone and see their faces. It makes a world of difference on a holiday than just having people pass the phone around.

We had a great and memorable Christmas this year and I can only hope and wish that they get better each year.