Minnesota Christmas Eve and Day

We celebrated Christmas Eve here in Minnesota on Dec 16, and Christmas Day on Dec 17. This was our 4th Christmas living here in Minnesota.

We got fresh snow for Christmas Eve!

On the day of Christmas Eve, we played and lazed around in the morning, baked stuff for Jesus' birthday cake, and watched videos about Christ's birth. In the afternoon, I had a big meeting at the Hormel corporate office to continue planning the SPAMKids Fest that will take place this spring. After that, it was all family time! 

We got our stake dinner ready and then---er-- hold up here. We? I almost forgot! Poor Jeremy was sick as a DOG, so it actually was just me who got the stake dinner ready. I used our outdoor grill in the 6 inches of snow and managed to get all the other dishes ready, too, with very minimal help. Unfortunately, the meat wasn't that great. We sure missed having Daddy's touch on the main dish. What a trooper though, Jeremy still joined us for dinner even though he was feeling awful, as you can see. :(

We ate sweet potatoes, brussel sprouts, salad, maybe something else and rolls (which is a big deal because we very rarely eat rolls).

After dinner, we wrote things down to put in Jesus' stocking as our gifts to him. Tanner really took the activity to heart, promising to be kinder to his little brother. Dallin took a very literal approach to this activity, saying that he would help make Jesus' birthday cake.

 Me and Jeremy put in gifts for Jesus, too. We put all our notes in the white stocking for Jesus.

Then we played Nativity! About a week earlier, we played the Wisemen. Jeremy hid our boy doll in the TV room under a star, and we all used pillows for "camels" by holding them in between our legs. We trecked around the house until we found the baby. It was so fun! 

On this special night, Tanner directed the scene. No surprise, we all ended up being the same characters we were last year and the year before: I was Mary. Tanner was Joseph, or as Dallin says "Jofes." Dallin was baby Jesus, and Jeremy read the story from Luke and filled in as the angel and shepherds when needed. It was short, but really fun. We testified to the boys that we know this was not just a story, that the miracle of Jesus' birth really did happen. Tanner said "We KNOW, Mom! You don't have to keep telling us!" Haha. I told him, "Yes I do! Because it is so amazing!"

 

Then we tried to do our traditional stocking exchange, where we fill eachother's stockings and wait until the next day (Christmas morning) to see what was put in our own stocking. I got the boys the same things to put in their brother's stocking. So when Tanner saw that he was giving Dallin some ninja turtle jammies, he flipped out and said HE wanted them. Meanwhile in the other room, Dallin saw that he was giving Tanner some ninja turtle jammies and flipped out, too! It was a double meltdown. So we let them see each others pajamas and just put them on. And then the universe was back in balance! Lol, I didn't plan that out very well. I really wanted them to wear their Christmas jammies to bed, but it was better this way. The boys were very excited!!  

After getting in our jammies, we put out some pie and egg nog for Santa. Tanner and Dallin know that Santa is just pretend and that me and Jeremy eat the food. But they still like to pretend, and enjoy seeing the food eaten the next day.  

Next, we read one of my favorite Christmas stories called "A Night Without Darkness," which describes the Christmas account given in the Book of Mormon, where the people in the Americas witnessed the miraculous lights in the sky at Christ's birth. 

After stories and prayers, the boys went to bed pretty much as usual and had a good night's sleep. 

On Christmas morning, Tanner only woke up 15 minutes sooner than he normally does, so that wasn't too bad! The boys played in the library and watched a show on the computer like they usually do, which gave us a little more time to sleep.

Then it was time to see our surprises. Daddy took pictures and videos of us waiting to go downstairs.

We got some great videos of the boys coming down to see their surprises. The night before, we had fun setting it all up. We tried to keep the gifts simple and few since we knew they'd be getting lots of things in California. Both boys got their own remote control race car, some science activities, and a special shelf to display all their little collections. To share together, they got a box of legos! They seemed to really like it all!

And yes, I put out some books for Dallin that we already owned because his section of gifts didn't look as large as Tanner's, and I knew he forgot that we had those books.

Watching them learn how to use their cars was really fun! They played with the cars for about 45 minutes before wanting to do anything else. 

Then Jeremy told me to look in my stocking. Inside was a clue. Somehow, Jeremy set up an entire scavenger hunt with clues about my gift. Some of the clues said "It is too big to fit in the washing machine" "It is something our guests might like to use" "It could help you watch TV." Eventually, I was led out into the garage to to find this: a beautiful reading chair for our library!!! 

Somehow during the month, he got the chair from the cities on craiglist and brought it home with a rental truck, without me knowing. He hid it in the shed. Then on Christmas Eve while I was putting the kids to sleep, he snuck out in the snow (sick as a dog, mind you) and carried the thing into the garage without me hearing him. I was really excited and super impressed that he did all of that. :D

Next, we ate a special breakfast, which included California eggs benedict, fruit salad and a bunch of other breakfast food. We had our Christmas crepes for lunch. YUM! We also opened some presents from extended family. We got to face-time with Grandpa Papa and Grandma Nana while the boys opened gifts from them, which was really fun. 

This says a special message to me from Tanner, and tanner's phonics was kinda close to what he wanted to say, but I don't remember what is was supposed to say and I can't make out the message now.

We got a mini foozeball table from Aunt and Uncle, and it was funny watching the boys try to figure out how it all worked.

Excited about a personalized calendar from Auntie.

They figure out how to play foozeball pretty quickly once it was all put together!

Tanner wasn't very thrilled about getting a book from Aunt and Uncle. But he really liked it once I read it to him.

That evening, we frosted the cake for baby Jesus. 

I made two versions of the same looking cake. I decided to use cookies as figurines for all the characters in the nativity. I liked how the chocolate pieces ended up accurately depicting the Savior's family and his visitors. 

Singing happy birthday and blowing the candles out for Jesus was a highlight of the whole holiday season.

We enjoyed story time that night in our new reading chair!

And the next morning, it was used for watching a show on the computer. So cozy!

I am so grateful we were able to have this quiet Christmastime as a family, and to focus on the blessings and miracles of our Savior's birth!! I know that Christ is the source of love and peace that we feel with our families. I love everything about His birth and enjoyed learning and teaching about that miracle with my family.

The Holiday Cheer Continues

I can't believe this is my 3rd post about the holiday season, and I still have several more to post! I am really glad that at the beginning of November, I carefully planned out every day of our holidays so that we could be sure to do everything we wanted to before going to Sacramento. It's fun looking back and seeing that we were able to do almost everything I had planned and still have plenty of time to relax and not get overwhelmed. (It helped that I got most of my Christmas shopping done before Halloween and all of it done before Thanksgiving!) This post is of our fun activities from Dec 8-15. 

A special delivery came from GramZ and GrampZ one day. It was an electric train to put around the Christmas tree! Jeremy was the most excited about it and loved reminiscing with the boys about the Christmas trains at his house when he was a kid. He was really giddy setting it up. All three boys played with it for the rest of the evening.

I like this shot of the train zooming around the track and the picture of Christ in the background.

Our tree got prettier and prettier as the days went by, because Tanner and Dallin brought home ornaments from school every day for advent (they attend a Catholic preschool).

Our church Christmas party was fun, and Dallin said hello to the visitors. (Tanner wasn't interested in Santa this time). I think it's hilarious how DJ ended up with a halloween shirt! 

On Saturday Dec 10, I took Tanner on a special outing to see the Nutcracker!! 

The weeks leading up to it, I told Tanner about the story, and we did lots of activities listening to the music from the ballet. We watched different nutcracker dances and stories on youtube. Finally, the big date came! We drove to a theatre in Rochester and Tanner LOVED it! He not only stayed awake the whole time, he bounced and conducted to the beat, smiled with excitement when he recognized his favorite songs and whispered to me about all the costumes and sets. At the end of each act, he got a little bored, so I held him in my lap and made his arms dance to the music, which he loved.

During intermission, we got popcorn and a rice Krispie treat. What a cutie with his snow hat hair!

We were a little disappointed that there was not a live orchestra accompanying all the dancing. But we did get to see some of the dancers up close after the show. Tanner was afraid to say hi to the dancers, but I got this pic from a distance. It was really fun to take my kid to the Nutcracker because it was something my mom did for me and my sisters every Christmas season. I hope to do it again next year, and maybe Dallin can come, too!

We babysat for Angie on Sunday, which means that we had 4 boys on our pew at church instead of 2. It was really fun, especially when this happened.

After church, all 4 boys went out to play in the new fallen snow! They had a great time!!

We had a couple friends over for Wassail and singing that evening.

The boys worked hard to wrap presents for their teachers and family. I helped as little as possible, and even though they used 3 times the amount of wrapping paper that I would have used, they did a pretty dang good job!

We enjoyed Tanner's preschool Christmas Concert!

I'm really proud of Tanner because he had a lot of anxiety with performing in the program. We talked through it, prayed, talked with his teacher, and he worked hard during his rehearsals. When the big night came, he was super excited and had no issues going up to sing, and he did a great job!

The lighting made it really hard to take pictures or video, but Tanner knew every song and sang really well! He was a little squished from the other kids on his row, though.

There was a great variety of songs, all centered on Christ. And they did a number with hand bells, reading the cards that the teacher held up to know when to play!

Our Christmas cactus bloomed just in time for us to enjoy it!

The boys got really excited about ninja turtles in December because of a show they found on netflix. They had fun playing with all the empty wrapping paper tubes.

We had some nasty windchills and sub zero temperatures for a few days, which meant no playing outside. So we built this snowman out of cardboard and craft supplies, lol. We also hoped to go on the Jolly Trolley ride in Rochester to see Christmas lights, but it ended up too cold for us, especially since Jeremy was sick. So we'll have to try that next year.

Tanner played hair shop one day on me without prompting. He did some pretty fun things to my hair!

We made it to the Spam Museum one day after school. 

The boys made this conglomeration of a feast for me, haha.

Right before it was time to celebrate our Christmas in Minnesota, poor Jeremy came down with a nasty cold. It turned out to be a combination of strep, bronchitis and pneumonia. Jeremy saw an online doctor about it, so we aren't entirely sure what he really had. He got some kind of antibiotics to help him.