Christmas 2006

We've had a pretty long but fun weekend, celebrating Christmas with the rest of our family. Friday night, the kids and I picked up Matt after work (7:00) and headed to my mom's in Yankton. We spent the night there, and Casey & Heidi and their kids showed up Saturday morning for our gift exchange. They brought Grandma Leigh Anne along too. We had a wonderful meal with ham and turkey, etc. and had fun afterward pairing up and hanging out, playing with our new toys. Here's some pictures.

Xander and Rylie adorning themselves with bows:

Xander & Grandma Leigh Anne building Bionicles
(very brave, Grandma!)

The boys went downstairs to play with
Casey's new cut capo for his guitar


It wasn't long before Chase went down to join them,
playing the drums on whatever he could find to hit.


Our two little princessess playing with their
Barbie dancing princessess

Soon Chase was trying to teach Maia how to play
drums. We sent them out on the deck because it was
so nice out. They still had to bundle up a little.
It wasn't long before Maia bullied Chase off and
took over the drums for herself.

Heidi and Rylie playing Polly Pocket


Grandma Leigh Anne helping out in the kitchen
"Gramma Jim" carving the turkey

Grandma Marilyn's failure to use the "Ga-boing Ga-boing" properly
Careful, Grandma! You'll break a hip!
Maia looking like a queen watching "Barbie Rapunzel"
in Grandma's bed

My personal haul for the first segment of the weekend
means our family will be eating in style this year! (The apples are just for show. No one gave me apples for Christmas)

After all the fun at Mom's we went home for church at Mercy Sunday morning. Things went really well for the 25 people or so that showed up. Once again, a reminder that our audience is not the people in the pews. Sunday evening, we had a very traditional Christmas Eve service, Matt wore a tie (!) and played his trumpet on some of the hymns. I played piano for most of the songs, and sang "O Holy Night" in my best classical voice. It was a nice service.

All dressed up and almost ready to go to church. The curlers did absolutely no good, but doesn't she look cute?

Afterward, we hopped in the car and headed for Bruce & George's to spend the night. The strange catch in that arrangement was that Bruce & George weren't even there. They went ahead to Fort Dodge, to George's mom & dad's where we joined them the next day. But what that meant was that we got to have a quiet Christmas Eve and Christmas morning together as a family. We hung the stockings by the fireplace with care, and sure enough, Santa was faithful to show up.

Christmas morning, we opened our stockings with the help of Mud the farm cat

We got dolled up and headed to Fort Dodge to celebrate Christmas day with Grandma Katie, Papa Svale, Uncle Dave, Cousin Eddie, Rena, Troy, Cassie, Lexi, Bruce, George, and Grandma Katie's cousin Blair from Georgia.

That was an adventure! Everyone opened all the gifts at once, so I have no idea what most people got, or how much they liked what we gave them! I helped Maia and she was decked out like a queen in no time:
We had another delectable meal featuring Cornish Game Hens- how fancy! Maia ate pickles and black olives. It wasn't long before people were pairing up again. Several of us took turns napping by the warmth of the fire in front of the TV showing 24-hours of "A Christmas Story." Xander and Lexi predictably took off and played as long as they could before the girls had to go. Nobody really knows what these two do when they play together, but they seem to have fun.

Here's Matt and his Uncle Dave jawing about something in the kitchen.

We returned home Tuesday morning, Xander has been playing his new Star Wars Lego Gameboy game for something like 18 hours straight. We were surprised to see that Santa stopped at our house and left a couple more gifts for us to open when we got home. Xander and Matt got a pair of baseball gloves and a ball for tossing around. I got a funky music sculpture, and Maia got a new toddler bed. She thinks it's OK.
Now comes the fun task of finding homes for all the new stuff, and coming down from the holiday rush. We have almost two full weeks to recover before school starts again. I have a feeling we'll be ready!