Christmas in Eau Claire

After a pretty busy Christmas Eve, we looked forward to the next couple days of quiet around our house.  For a couple years, we had contemplated staying home for Christmas, but wanting to see family, we always ended up traveling.  This year, with John's work at the church, we had to be around on Christmas and he got a couple other days off, so it was the perfect ushering-in of a new tradition of us being home on Christmas.  Lovely!

Christmas morning came quickly after a pretty late night with John at the 11pm service at Jacob's Well.  The boys woke up chatting in their room and we heard, "Let's go get Mom and Dad!".  So, we were up early to see if Santa came...

 Sure enough, the boys must've been so good this year!  The reindeer food was all gone and Santa enjoyed his cookies, even leaving a return note for Logan and Bennett.

 Santa brought some special gifts for the boys to share...

 And some goodies in the beloved stockings, too.

 Logan and Bennett are both budding Packers fans...a little hard to swallow for some of us Minnesotans, but they are coming by it honestly - living in Packer Country when the team is really doing well makes for a lot of Packer influence (even without our help!).

 Logan and Bennett each got to go shopping with us and choose a gift for each other, so they loved exchanging presents and telling about how they chose the special gifts for each other.

We finally got to open the special gift Logan made for us at preschool this year - it waited patiently under the tree...

 Logan was so proud of his little nativity scene and how he made the Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus.  Precious!

The aftermath!

The presents we gave were mostly small and lots of them were activities we could spend the day doing together.  The boys were anxious to work on a couple of the projects they got so after a special breakfast, we got to work!

 The boys also really enjoyed their new game table from Santa and that kept us busy most of the day.

 Bennett is singing either Hark the Herald (the "glooriaaaaaa part") or "Away in a Manger" - his two favorite Christmas carols!

 And of course, it wouldn't be Christmas without a special birthday cake for Baby Jesus - our Lord and Savior, born on Christmas for each one of us!  The boys really took pride in baking and decorating the cake.  We even got to share it with our friends, Mollie and Aubrey.

Hope you all had a blessed Christmas celebrating the birth of Jesus!

Christmas Eve

We got to spend Christmas at home this year, which was just perfect.  Christmas Eve was a busy day at Jacob's Well with four services, so John spent most of his day there.  The boys and I played with the new loot we brought back from Holbrook's Christmas, had a bath, great naps, and baked cookies for Santa!

Of course we had to test out those cookies for Santa...

and then we just got a little silly...

The boys sure loved their stockings this year!  Next year we'll have a girly stocking hanging, too!

Then we met John at church between services and enjoyed dinner for staff and volunteers in the fireside room.  It was great!

We went home to put out reindeer food, cookies and milk for Santa and to read some Christmas stories.  John was able to come home with us and spend some time before the next service began, so that was great.  The excitement really got to the boys and they weren't asleep in their bunks beds until nearly 11!

Merry Christmas

Many blessings to you as you share the holidays with those you love!

Little Stillwater Christmas

There was a short window where we could all be together - no easy task now that our kids are getting older (3 day preschool), Amy and Andrew moved to VA, and Kyle and Ali have a busy schedule too.  We had enough time to catch up briefly with A & A and for a gift opening - the kids dominated that part!

Logan spent a good amount of time surveying the gifts and checking out all the names. 

 Bennett was a trooper (and looking so dapper with his long-overdue haircut!) with lots of gifts to open and no nap.

 Showing off the gift...

 showing...

 still showing!

 Silly Benny!

 Logan and Bennett were both proud of their gifts for Papa and Nana.

 Nana made cute matching shirts!

 Showing it off again!

 See???

 Bennett has a real "thing" for puppies!  Logan's thing is for sea animals and he got lots of those!  Thanks for a great visit and for all the fun gifts!