We spent a few lovely days in New Hampton with Jon’s family after Christmas.  The girls love spending time with their cousins, aunts and uncles – we hardly see the girls except at meals and bedtime!  We enjoyed another Christmas celebration with a wonderful meal, gift giving and strawberries and ice cream for dessert.

Santa comes again and fills up their Iowa stocking!

Playmobil! The girls received a farm and store set and loved it.  Alex helped them put it together.

We spent a lot of time outside – skiing, skating and one warm afternoon, building tunnels in a huge snow pile.  The cousins had a raucous snowball game!

There was no snow in Lincoln, so we really had fun in the snow here!

The girls are just learning to skate so we don’t participate in the annual ice hockey game.  But it sure is fun to watch!

Lily helping her sister stay upright.  🙂

We just returned from 8 lovely Christmasy days with family in Nebraska and Iowa.  We love spending time with our family – cooking, eating, laughing, playing games, watching Sound of Music, catching up on life, giving gifts and getting some great ones, too!

Sylvia gave Great-Grandma the teddy bear for Christmas. GG named it Nutmeg.

Christmas Eve

Grandma made Sylvia, Lily and me matching aprons!

Super fun Headbandz game.

We went for a walk on the prairie on Christmas Day.

Sylvia and Grandpa in their Hawkeye colors. 🙂

Making a gingerbread house with Laura.

We love our sweatshirts!

We have all our decorations out, our tree is up and full of ornaments and there are chocolate peanut butter balls just waiting to be eaten (they won’t have to wait long!).  We have been singing Christmas songs, reading Christmas books and getting presents ready.  We love this time of year!  Here are a few pictures of recent events.

Guess what we made?

We love the new chair and read books in it all the time. Of course we have to keep it covered to deter kitty claws.

We love getting out all the decorations – it’s like unwrapping Christmas presents!

We picked out our tree on the coldest day so far – it was only 2 degrees! We chose our tree rather quickly, needless to say, but we love it – it’s perfect!

Back to Thanksgiving…I forgot to post these photos of some crafts we made with friends before Thanksgiving!

Lily set up this craft. She created the turkey and organized all the supplies. When our friends came, she taught them step by step.

They turned out pretty cute!