Christmas Eve

We have a routine for Christmas Eve that has been working pretty well for the past couple of years. The day is calm and relaxing with lots of books, Christmas music and games, which is good because the evening is busy!

We go to church in the afternoon, followed by a traditional codfish dinner at Nana and Pop's and then back home to sprinkle reindeer food on the lawn and leave cookies for Santa.

My boys in their Christmas best.

Will carried the cookies for Santa.

This year, we used a Danish Christmas plate and cup from Gramma and Grampa for the cookies and milk.  

All ready for Santa to come fill the stockings!

Right before bed, Henry dashed downstairs to leave our elf Frosty a note. As usual, Frosty got into some trouble but he didn't make quite the mess he did last year. 

It says, "Dear Frosty, Thank you for the snowflake ornament and the note in my spy book. Love, Henry." We'll have to add Henry's note to Frosty to our long list of Christmas traditions!

Christmas with Gramma and Grampa

We celebrated Christmas with Gramma and Grampa a few days early this year. We enjoyed good food, lots of piano playing, games, reading, and presents, of course.

It wouldn't be Christmas with my parents without krumkake, a Norwegian rolled cookie filled with whipped cream.

We opened presents throughout the afternoon. The boys got lots and lots of new books, some games, and these old banks from my grandfather!

We got Pathwords for my dad since he loves words!

Gramma and Grampa with our boys!

After presents, Gene, Will and I went out to do some geocaching

while Henry stayed home to read books and play piano. 

This boy has memorized "Jingle Bells" and "Jolly Old Saint Nicholas" and plays them constantly! 

Sing-along with Gramma. 

 We had such a fun Christmas with Gramma and Grampa!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas

from our family to yours!

Geocaching and Cookie Decorating

Our weekend plans changed a bit due to family and friends' illnesses, so we ended up with a free Monday morning and decided we needed to get out and stretch our legs. We headed to the Arboretum for some exploring and geocaching (hunting for treasures using GPS coordinates).

The boys learned how to geocache in an Arboretum camp a couple years back but we had never done it as a family. Following the coordinates on our phone's app was easy,

but we had some trouble finding our first cache. It was hidden under a bridge, floating in water, so it was tricky to find. Gene had to pry it out with a massive branch while I grabbed it and manuevered it out!

Our first cache!

Will signed the log.

And then we were off to find cache #2.

This one was hidden under a box on a light post!

Both boys loved our morning adventure, and we are excited to get out, explore and go geocaching again soon! Back at home, we decorated sugar cookies. It just wouldn't be Christmas without the cookies!

 

Henry's last cookie got all the leftover sprinkles.

 We are looking forward to more Christmas fun this week!

'Tis the Season

We are enjoying a much-needed break from school and work. The past two weeks have been jam-packed with the busy-ness of the season and life but we are excited about celebrating Christmas with our families and taking some time to relax and slow down as the year comes to an end.  

Last weekend, we went to Houston Symphony for their children's Christmas concert, a holiday tradition for our family.

We managed to see Santa too! Will asked for a chess set and Wii U and Henry just asked for books.

Before the concert, Will practiced making shadow animals with his hands.

Since we were downtown, we stopped by Market Square to check out the 2014 Gingerbread Build-Off. 

We'd never been before, but over 30 teams of architects, designers and students compete to build some pretty incredible and elaborate structures. We saw castles, pirate ships, Atlas under a globe and even the Death Star.

We left before the gingerbread sculptures were completed but it was fun to watch the teams build their masterpieces.

We have been busy with Cub Scouts, as always. At December's pack meeting, we made sleighs out of old appliance boxes. The dens decorated their boxes with all kinds of Christmas items and then ran outside to pull them. It was a lot of fun! 

Some quick repair work by the dad pit team!

We also delivered our popcorn!

This week, the boys' dens had holiday parties. Will's party started with a uniform inspection (he passed, though our assistant den leader tried to take off points for missing three teeth!).  

We invited Henry's den over to our house to decorate cookies, drink hot cocoa, and make some Christmas crafts.

The boys' teachers made the week before winter break lots of fun, with movies, crafts and parties. No one even had homework, which was a lovely change of pace.  

On Wednesday, I helped out with a craft in Henry's classroom. We read Stick Man by Julia Donaldson and made our own stick men and family trees.  

I also helped out with my boys' class parties on Thursday.

 

 We wish you much joy and peace this Christmas season!