The Holidays part 6: Christmas morn.

On Christmas Day, we spent the first part of the morning at home.  Clara got to see what Santa brought her, and Kurtis and I gave Clara and each other our few gifts.  It was nice to enjoy the quiet morning together at home!  And Santa brought Clara a guitar which was the one gift she's been asking for since November!  She was elated and plays that thing multiple times a day!

Then, Kurtis got dressed and Clara and I kept our jammies on and we hopped in the truck to head to Oma and Opa's house.  Teenie and Steve had to leave in the early afternoon, so we were going to spend the morning with them and the afternoon and evening with the Brooks side of the family!

We got to Oma and Opa's, and before eating breakfast together we decided to dive in to gift opening!

Here is Ben opening a tractor (he'd know the more technical term for the piece of equipment, but to me, they're all tractors - sorry Steve).

And here is Will opening his John Deere piece of equipment.  You can see in their eyes how much these little guys love green things with wheels!

Here are the three wee ones opening their special book from Auntie Emmy.  They all love their books!  Emmy got Clara a book about a girl super hero, because apparently that was Clara's request.  That girl!  The special book is called Ladybug Girl.

I love how all of them take a peek at each others' books!  Cousins are so fun!

I made each of the kids a striped quilt.  And as you can see from these next pics, Will actually loved his!  He's such a snuggle bug and adores blankies!

Clara loved her fox hat/cowel from Auntie Nienie!  Check out that handiwork!  We were all so impressed with Teenie's knitting skills!  And Clara's most fave animal ever is the fox, so it couldn't have been a more perfect gift!

From Opa and Oma, the kids all got a sleeping bag with their name on it.  So precious!  Can't wait for cousin sleepovers in those things soon!

The kids just loved them!


Poor Ben went to urgent care on Christmas Day with a bad case of croup.  Poor babe.  You can see how miserable he felt in this pic!

Clara and Ben found a couple moments to snuggle together on Christmas morning!

Oh my...

It was a wonderful morning with the family!  Breakfast was delish and time together as a family was even better!  Thanks family for a magical Christmas!

The Holidays part 5: Christmas Eve.

Early on Christmas Eve Day, we went and visited Kurtis' grandpa and his Aunt Tina and Uncle Mike.  It was nice to see them during the holidays!

Later that evening, we headed over to the Waldon home.  We had a shortage of food, as usual.  (This is only half of the food we put out...it's a sickness).

We also spent Christmas Eve with our longtime neighbors Carol, Ben, and Becky.

We took some time early in the night to take pics.  And thank goodness for my parents and Teenie!  I just stole all of their pictures because I've been a slacker when it comes to photographing anything lately!

Here are Oma, Opa, and Emmy

Clara and Ben decided to join the pic!  Sadly, Clara had already shed her cute sweater at this point.  Little stinker!

Here's our family

And the Kaufmans

Obligatory sister pic

The small ones got to open one gift each!

And then they serenaded us with lovely tunes on the piano!

Then Emily decided to be her wacky self!  Check this next sequence out!

Then she did a very important job with cookies, milk, and reindeer food veggies.

As you can tell, it was a wonderful Christmas Eve!

And thanks Teenie and 'rents for letting me steal your pictures!  I'm glad you made an effort to take lots of photos during the holidays!!!  It was a wonderful Christmas Eve!

The Holidays part 4: decorating gingerbread houses and trains.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

On to the post...

After the train ride, everyone went back to Oma and Opa's house.  And later that night, Clara decorated a gingerbread house and the boys decorated gingerbread trains!  It was so much fun!  I'm actually amazed that the gingerbread got decorated, mainly because the toddlers were eating every bite of candy they could!  Little munchkins!

Here's Will decorating the top of his train.

Look at that focus!  He worked so hard at decorating for the first five minutes.  Then he ate for a solid 20!  He started the nibbling craze, and the others were quick to join in!  We quickly learned that sugar is the devil!!!

Here are Ben and Steve working hard!

And Kurtis and Clara!

My job was to hold the roof together.  It slid apart twice.  The third time was a charm, thanks to Kurtis' patience!

Nibble nibble.

In the background of this next photo, Steve is squirting frosting in Ben's mouth!  Sick!

Ben kept calling the frosting puddin', which was adorable!

Don't mind our disheveled looking little girl.  She has just woken up from her nap when we started decorating!

It was so much fun to decorate with the three wee ones!  I think decorating gingerbread objects may become a tradition.  And I gotta say, the kits are where it's at!  We considered baking the gingerbread house pieces with Cynth's Pampered Chef gingerbread house stone, but the kits made everything easy!  One thing we'd do differently is assemble the houses/trains during nap time and then let the kids decorate!  We gotta remember that tidbit next year!  The construction made the process just a little long for them!

Once again, thanks Oma and Opa for the special time!  We loved it!

PS - Where in the world did the gingerbread house and trains end up?  I didn't see them after the night of the 23rd!