Christmas Day

Christmas morning!  The kids found the baby Jesus right away and put him in the manger. 

Mayzie is pointing out here that Santa ate the cookies and toffee!

Presents!

Calvin got a Trio Bat Cave.  Mina got a marble tower game set.  And Mayzie got some new play food for the kitchen.

Each kid also got a party of the fisher price nativity set.

More happy Christmas faces!

I think my favorite part of Christmas this year was seeing Mina get into the giving.  She made some awesome gifts at school.  She also went to a little gift buying thing at school and picked stuff out for us.  And she made several things for us all - little books, and ornaments, and fun Mina stuff!  She was so excited and sweet about giving her gifts.  It was wonderful.

Joe wanted lasagna for our Christmas dinner.  So, we did out best to make the ULTIMATE lasagna!  It was mighty tasty!

We really had a relaxing day.  Joe, Calvin, and Mina stayed in their pj's the whole day, I put curlers in my hair, and the kids just played and played.  It was nice!

'Twas the Night Before Christmas...

For Christmas Eve, some new friends invited us over to share in their tradition - Christmas nachos!  Yum!  We loved it!  She also had a great set up for making gingerbread houses with the kids.  They had a great time making them. 

Here is Mina's.  She later added 2 peppermint swimming pools, and there are a bunch of gummy bears hiding there in inside the house.

Calvin made sure there were plenty of guards surrounding his house!

Mina wanted to make sure we got home early, so as not to miss Santa.  Being that we live so close to the north pole now, we are one of his first stops.  When we got home, Joe read the account of Christ's birth in Luke 2 and the kids played along with the Nativity set.

Still no baby Jesus, though!

One picture in front of the tree and it was off to bed!

One more... Calvie's happy Christmas face!

Christmas in a box

This year, we stayed home for Christmas.  For the first time ever, we did not get to see our family for Christmas.  Therefore, we received many packages of gifts from our dear family!  It was fun to get the packages, and open them up and put the presents under the tree.  Definitely different. 

Cookies!

We love to make Christmas cookies, and my favorite are frosted sugar cookies.  This year I found a new recipe for the frosting, and I love how they turned out.  Here's a link for the frosting recipe.

Of course, I had lots of helpers -  actually, more like frosting quality controlers.

They turned out so pretty, if I do say so myself!

Calvin's Christmas program

Calvin's preschool put on a Christmas program.  He's in the middle row, second from the left.  They sang a few Christmas songs, as well as some other preschool songs.  Very cute!  He also presented me with a Christmas gift that he made himself!  It was a jar, painted with green, red, and gold.  We use it for holding pens and pencils.  He was very excited to give it to me!

The Christmas Train

 

Each year in downtown Minot, a Christmas Train comes through, all decorated with lights.  We thought that sounded pretty cool, so we got all bundled up and went to wait for the train to come.  It was freezing, 8 degrees, so the kids had very little patience.  See the shininess on my cheeks, yea, that's ice.  It was really cold.  Thankfully the town provided free hot chocolate, hot dr. pepper (that was a new one), and hot dogs.  It did little to warm us up, but we kept waiting!  These pics are not that great, my camera does not do well with night shots, but you get the idea...

 

We waited at the end of Main Street where the big Christmas tree is lit!

We had to go warm up in a store so we wouldn't freeze, but when we came out, the train was there!

There was a band playing some rockin' Christmas songs on the train and the lights on the train were really cool!

We toughed it out for a bit longer and headed home.  Here is a view of the downtown decorated for Christmas.  They have speakers that play Christmas music all the time down here.  Joe loves that, he says it feels like the movie "A Christmas Story."

As we left, we got a better view of the train!  Fun!

Merry Christmas!

 Merry Christmas to all our Family and Friends!  Below is my attempt at getting a nice pic of the kids and/or family.  As you will see, it was not very successful!  Enjoy anyway and take a look at our older posts too if you haven't checked in lately!