Christmas This & That

This was taken after the school Christmas Program (it was upside down in the slide show for some reason so here it is...)
Well it has still taken me a while to get through my Christmas blogging - Sorry, but I want to do it & I want to have it done before the end of January!!!
The school Christmas program was fun as usual and they even got to sing "Silent Night" & "We Wish You a Merry Christmas". Who knows if that will still get to happen in the future...with all the garbage out there. At least we can still celebrate in our homes and church!
We had a fun time at Brad's family Christmas party. Food, games and fun! Kolten was asked to be Joseph in the nativity and as you can tell from the pictures he was a little scared of Mary!! (I don't know if that was the case but he would not move any closer no matter how hard Brad and I tried to persuade him!) Morgan was an angel and was thrilled! She could hardly stand the excitement of it all. My favorite part (besides the food:)) was giving Brad's parents the gift I made for them. The game we play every time and anytime we are together with Brad's family is Rook - the card game. (It's funny because I grew up playing it in my family, too!) Anyway I made them Rook cards with all the family's pictures on them. I even made Brad's parents the Rook! I loved it and was really excited about it. I think they liked it, too. I hope they have fun playing Rook with those cards for a long, long time.
We went through some snow on the way home from the party and Morgan was thrilled! As she stared longingly out the window, she sighed "this is the best day of my life." (And this is before Santa even came!!) Then in the next breath she says, "but if we can't stop and play in it, it'll be the worst day!" Hmmm...she is not the least dramatic. Well we did stop for lunch and let Morgan "play" for a minute or two, but it was snowing again and Brad wanted to get on the road before it got worse. Of course that made Morgan sad, but she enjoyed it while she had the chance. (I was sitting in the car with the heater on, as I took the pictures! - I was not prepared for a "snow day"!!) (To jump ahead a little, lucky for us we got snow at our house the day AFTER Christmas! Morgan got all dolled up in her "snow gear" and went out and braved it - then she'd come in and stand by the fire - back & forth. What fun she had ... until it melted, which didn't take long since there wasn't a whole lot to begin with!!
Last of course was our Christmas Eve and Christmas. Christmas eve day was turning out to be kind of yucky with the mom feeling a little overwhelmed and not so Christmas spirited! It took a letter from a nonmember friend to get me back on track. Morgan & Kolten wanted to make sugar cookies, cut out in Christmas shapes and of course to frost and decorate them, to leave for Santa. Well feeling like I didn't have time for that & knowing that Santa wouldn't really care, I tried to 1) talk them out of it, and 2) talk them into making some other easy cookies Santa likes, & finally 3) talk them into using store bought nasty cookie dough. Well the store bought dough didn't hold the shapes well & the cookies turned out flat and yucky. After reading the friend's letter I decided that everything else I was stressing over (like a clean house for Christmas, wrapping presents, etc.) that day was not important - making cookies - making memories with Kolten & Morgan was. So I made real sugar cookie dough and we had a great time cutting out stockings, candy canes, stars and more. We laughed, we ate the dough, they created some really neat cookies (candy canes coming out of the stockings) and we had a great time. Then we made frosting - white, red & green! I even had Brad get Christmas sprinkles at the store because Morgan really had her heart set on sprinkles. So we had sprinkles! I felt bad that it took someone else to remind me of the important things of the season and that I wasn't already in that frame of mind, but at least I learned quickly and changed some things before it was too late! A tradition we have here is on Christmas eve late afternoon Santa comes by on the fire trucks and throws candy to the kids before he has to be at the North Pole leaving on his sleigh...it is always fun and like I said...it's tradition! We were Lucky enough to be invited by our DEAR friend Robin for Christmas eve again. It was Really Good food and good company. We really enjoy it and appreciate how much work she does to feed all of us. I only had to bring the punch! And I was lucky that I already had some made up in the freezer, so it was really easy for me! Thanks Robin! Morgan did a special Christmas movie "line" for Robin & her girls that night, so I feel like I contributed a little more to the whole evening!:)
Christmas morning was fun as always. We scaled back this year and no one even noticed or cared. I made the family a "go fish" card game with some of our fishing pictures and some other picture projects. We had breakfast at my sister Carrie's as has been tradition since we moved here - she makes abelskievers (sp?), I make blueberry french toast (an overnight casserole) and this year I made Sausage bread, too. Dustin (my brother) brought biscuits & gravy and Clarice made a overnight sausage breakfast casserole, too. It was all YUMMY!! We really just do Christmas breakfast instead of a big Christmas dinner. I think I made some homemade soup for dinner that night. We spent the rest of the day home, enjoying each other! Loved it!!!! By the way, I have this little quirk about people always asking "what did you get?" So I might avoid the question or sometimes ignore it altogether. I really don't like to tell people what I got (not that I am embarrassed about the gifts Brad picks out:))but because I don't think that is what is important. So don't be offended if I don't ask you "what did you get?". I need to be more concerned with what I gave or what I have done... I really don't think what I got really matters! But I am grateful that I had another year with Brad, Kolten & Morgan, that we still have work and a nice home, that we have had good health, that we are blessed with each other. I don't mind telling you I got that for Christmas!