Christmas

As soon as they were allowed to, the kids woke us up as soon to show us the presents Santa brought them. As usual Santa did most of his shopping at the Lego store. After some breakfast, we got to work dumping out our stockings.

Then we took turns opening presents. Damon was fun to buy for, as always, and got some nerdy things he was pretty excited about, like his cup-stacking kit with StackMat timer and Snap Circuits rover.

Carmen got several Redwall-themed presents, such as a sweatshirt and mp3s of the Redwall songs, along with the ukulele she didn't get last year.

Olivia got some clothes, craft supplies, books, matching Christmas pajamas, and my favorite, her own set of D&D dice.

Miles got various toys, the aforementioned bike certificate, the Guardians of Gahoole books, and a certain spaceman, who was a big hit.

Amber got a docking station, massage gun, and the present she really wanted, power tools.

I got a cool "Rogers the Musical" T-shirt, some duet music, a solar-powered battery pack, and of course, a few Lego sets.

The rest of the day was spent playing with our new toys, until we were worn out.

Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve, we did a little last-minute shopping looking for a bike for Miles (they were all sold out everywhere, so he got a coupon for a bike) and a few other things. Amber made her traditional clam chowder in bread bowls for dinner.

We sang Christmas Carols, then we acted out the Nativity story.

I tried to delay it longer, just to annoy the kids, but they were very excited to open one sibling present before bed.

Santa took a little longer than usual this year, but it was all eventually set for Christmas morning.

Handbells and gingerbread

We made a goal to do handbells with a few people before Christmas, and it made for a very busy week before Christmas. We'd already done a session with Dan's family on Saturday, then on Wednesday we did a session at the DiVall's house, where they had a bunch of family in town so we could easily cover all the notes.

We were going to do gingerbread houses with Carmen's friend's family, but they got sick, so we did some of those Wednesday night without them.

Then on Thursday we had the Hartzheims over to do our last handbell session.

Music night with Dan's family

We wanted to invite Dan's family over to do handbells for Christmas, but since they all play various instruments to it somehow morphed into a music night. We played bells, but we also got out accordions, violins, cellos, basses, and saxophones.

Amber had gotten a bunch of parts for Christmas music and we had a great time playing various combinations of music.

Christmas Lego

A few years ago I got a small Christmas Lego set, and Amber made wooden blocks with Lego plates on top to use as stocking holders. Last year I got Amber a Charles Dickens Christmas set, so this year I collected a few more sets so everyone could have one on their stocking holder

We all built them together as our last Christmas decoration.

Eagle Springs Winter Festival

I took the kids to the Eagle Springs Winter Festival on Saturday. It was old hat for us at this point, having gone to so many of these over the years, but everyone still had fun. We started with the hayride.

Then moved on to the petting zoo.

After that we split up and tried games, bounce houses, crafts, and balloon animals, then joined back up to ride the train.

It was quite a cold day, so we decided to go home to warm up, but not before saying good-bye to Rudolph.

Humble Christmas Parade

We checked another item off our to-do list this week. We'd heard many times about the Humble Christmas Parade, but this is the first time we managed to actually plan for it. We drove and parked at a nearby shopping center and walked in to find a place to watch. It was already crowded, but we found a pretty good place to watch.

They had a lot of traditional parade-type vehicles. Our favorites were the low-riders with hydraulics.

The kids gathered up a lot of candy, then we headed out, stopping at a dollar store on the way back to the car.

Flooring the attic

After considering it for years, we finally decided to floor the boys' room attic. The new closet in the girls' room took up some of that attic so it seemed like it was time.

This attic was technically a little more complicated because of the joists and supports and air vents. Amber and I planned it out together, bought the wood, then she took charge of cutting the plywood, while I installed them.

It took a couple weeks, but we eventually got it all done.

Now it's time to fill it up.

Pinewood Derby

On Wednesday the youth and a-days groups combined for a Pinewood Derby activity. We made the cars in a weeks before. Miles wanted a turtle, Damon made a race car, Carmen made a badger (from Redwall), and Olivia made a taco car.

The cars did respectably in their races. The turtle and badger were the fastest. The taco car had too much drag, I think, and Damon put his own wheels on before I could stop him, so his axles weren't straight, but all the cars won at least one race. We even muscled our way onto the track to get a race between just our four cars.

There was no weight limit, so some over-achievers won the overall, but the kids still had a fun time.