Christmas 2019

 Christmas seemed to come fast this year.  Part of it might be that Thanksgiving was later this year.  Part might be that I had strep throat that put me out of commission for about 10 days in early December and part might be I'm just getting old and times speeds by now.  But we still managed to have some festive Christmas fun.  We went to see the lights in a local park.  It was free and uncrowded.  And also very fun.

A dragon?

Unicorn

Tunnel of lights

Anna has been learning to play the violin this year and they had a small Christmas caroling concert.  They played in the hallway of their school while the kids walked to class in the morning.  They did a great job.  Anna told me that morning of the event that parents were allowed to come.  Before she had said they weren't allowed.  So it was nice we got to see the performance.  Anna is the first on the far left.

We made a lot of treats.  Perhaps too many.  Sugar cookies.

Wreaths

Pretzel treats.  We also made fudge, peanut butter cup cookies, peanut butter kiss cookies, chocolate crinkle cookies, Rice Krispy treats and muddy buddies.  Plus our nice neighbors brought us many treats.

We had a nice Sunday dinner with my parents and Scott's sister and her family.  Here is my mom with baby Clark.  I didn't get any other pics of our dinner. But we had a good time.

On Christmas Eve we had our usual nativity themed family night.  This year nobody argued or fought about being in the Christmas program.  I don't make anyone participate, but every year there is some sort of conflict over being in it.  This year no fighting about it.  Emma begged to be Mary and John agreed to be Joseph.

Grant was a shepherd and Matthew played all the angel characters

Anna is a sheep here

Emma grew weary of being Mary since she had to be in so many scenes.  We told her she could sit down and that the really Mary was probably tired in a lot of the scenes as well.

Anna was the wise men

All the kids participated happily in singing.  Another amazing occurrence.

Then we found the gifts from Ma2 (Scott's mom).

Pajama pants!!

Everyone looked so cute in their pants and they all fit

We checked the NORAD Santa tracker and Santa was in Canada at the time...so off to bed

Christmas morning came too soon

We told the kids not to come in and get us until after 7am.  At 6:45 I got up to preheat the oven for breakfast and 4 little children were lined up outside our bedroom door waiting for 7am.  At least they were quiet.

I made cinnamon rolls the night before (Guptill family tradition) and have them rise overnight in the fridge.  So they were ready to go into the oven in the morning.  And I whipped up German pancakes (Keeler family tradition).  And we had fruit salad with 7up (Guptill family tradition).  We had a light dusting of snow, so it was a white-ish Christmas.

And after breakfast we opened presents

Emma found a big one to open first

John was excited to get a soft batman toy

Emma got a unicorn she wanted

Beyblades for Grant

Hotwheels toy for John

Grant playing with a break out beasts slime toy he got

Having fun with a fishing game!

My parents came over in the afternoon to hang out with us

John had to interview a Grandpa for a school assignment due when they get back from vacation so he interviewed my dad.

This is a picture he drew of Grandpa Keeler.  

He always wants to emphasize that they both have blue eyes.

Grant building a Gatling gun toy.  It took several hours to build.

And playing a googly eyes game we got.  It was a fun Christmas.  I didn't get a picture of dinner but we had a nice big dinner with my parents.  Scott made rolls from scratch, his famous baked beans from scratch and did most of the work on the tangerine glazed ham.  I made the scalloped potatoes with Scott's help and a big salad.  Scott also washed tons of dishes to keep us in clean dishes for the holidays.  We had a great holiday.  Merry Christmas all.

Christmas Prep

Christmas is coming!  And we've been doing our best to get ready.  Here are a few pictures of our Christmas preparations.  I hurt my lower back a few days before Thanksgiving and it was very slow healing.  It was several weeks before my back felt normal again.  Darn back issues.  I don't normally have back issues I just leaned way over to lift a basket laundry and pulled something.  So I wasn't at full capacity for the beginning of December.  On this day (above) John and Emma accompanied Scott and I to get a Christmas tree.  We ended up buying one from Home Depot.  John and Emma pose with a Grinch display at the store.

Scott putting our chosen tree on the top of the car.

And bringing it in the house

Undecorated tree in the background

Emma's magnet creation in the front

It took us a few days to get around to decorating

It was Grant's year to put on the star...next year John's turn

Scott tends to the trees water needs regularly

Tree with the star on

Emma with me at the craft store - getting a few Christmas things

Trying to make things Christmas-ish at the entry table

Decorating is not my strong suit

A couple weeks ago I started feeling sick.  Cold symptoms and a really sore throat.  When the painful sore throat hit I thought it might be strep, but then I started to feel a little better.  Then one afternoon I started rapidly feeling worse again so the next day I went to the doctor for a throat swab and I did have strep.  Luckily that meant I could take antibiotics and start feeling better but it took a little while.  I had wanted to make gingerbread houses for the kids but hadn't felt well and kept putting it off hoping I would feel better.  For the past several years we make gingerbread houses from scratch for each kid.  It's a lot of work but a fun tradition.

Finally we were able to make our houses.  Here is a gingerbread man decorated by Anna.  Her cookie decorating ambitions make me tired but look cute.

Gingerbread day is here!  I made two batches of thick royal icing and piped some out to assemble each house then I go back around to add more frosting for decorating.  It's a long and often messy process. I feel like the strep made my joints hurt - maybe that's not real and I'm just getting old - but while I was sick my hands were sore a lot and I had a lot of discomfort while trying to pipe out the thick royal icing.  Luckily after a few more days on the antibiotics by hands felt better.

Here we are assembling

The frosting was so thick it did a good job holding the houses together.  

We only had a few structural issues.

Everyone had their own decorating ideas.

Here are a bunch of house decorating pictures.

And here is a picture of Matthew at his Christmas band concert.  He plays the trumpet in the junior high beginner band and enjoys it.  A lot of friends from church and school are also in the band.

He's on the left in a suit and Santa hat.  More Christmas adventures to come.