The wait for Santa is on

Grace wrote out a note to Santa and got the plate of cookies & celery ready for the big guy and his reindeer.  Christmas Eve is so exciting!  Click on the pics to enlarge...you can read the note better that way ;)!

Christmas Eve

We've had a nice, quiet Christmas Eve day!  We went to lunch at Cracker Barrel, thanks to Aunt Jensine and Uncle Fred :)....and it was soooo good!  One of my favorite places, for sure.  Then we came home and let the kids open their gifts from us.  This year we gave each of the kids 4 gifts:  Something you want, something you need, something to wear, and something to read.  It seems like they get SO much at Christmas time and most of it gets crumpled on the floor by January, so we thought this might be a good idea to cut down on things a little.  Here are the kids with their loot...

SOMETHING YOU WANT:

SOMETHING YOU NEED:

SOMETHING TO WEAR:

SOMETHING TO READ:

And the note I put out last night when I put the presents under the tree:

A Very Daglum Christmas

My Grandpa Stewart made the wooden figures on the church's piano

We went over to Daglum on Saturday and stayed over night at Grandpa Jim's so we could go to Christmas Eve church service on Sunday (ok, so it was actually Dec. 20th not the 24th but Daglum only has church every 2 weeks so you have to improvise :) ).  It was a very nice service and then they had a big potluck afterwards, of course!  The Norwegians like their food :)!  It was a really foggy, frosty weekend....pretty on the trees though. 

The Christmas frenzy has begun

I spent the past 2 evenings wrapping like crazy.  The dogs were 'helping' as you can see. 

We found some great gifts for the Kinney get-together, I know they can hardly wait.  Here is a little sneak preview of one of our finds....seashells, raffia, pottery....how can you go wrong ;)?

Impromptu Christmas program

Ben at the right with the brown sleeve....and his sheep at the bottom of the stairs :)

The Kinneys went to church this morning!  Matt is in confirmation class at McCabe United Methodist Church, and he happened to sign me up to bring dessert to the Potato Bar after church this morning.  So we took the little kids to Sunday School and went to the church service afterwards.  It ended up being the Children's Christmas program this morning, and they just so happened to have an extra shepherd costume, and it just so happens that one of the angels was sick this week, so Ben and Grace were In Like Flynn :).  They didn't have any lines, which is good.  Grace was in her glory...they sang Jingle Bells during the service, and after that got their costumes on for the program.  She loooooved being an angel, probably because she's such an angel in real life (ha).  Ben was also very good at his shepherd duties, except he dropped his sheep and it rolled down the steps.  Like a true professional he ignored it and went about his business.  We did eat the Potato Bar afterwards, and Matt and Rich stayed to clean up.  It's a nice church...the people were nice and the eatin's were good :).

Ben turns 10

Ben officially turned 10 on the 5th.  He declared it pajama day, so he is in his jammies in all these pics :).  He opened his presents in the morning, and we had pizza and cake in the evening.  Matt has been watching Cake Boss on TLC fervently lately, and wanted to tackle making the cake.  We baked the cakes and made the fondant Friday night, and Matt spent most of Saturday morning creating his masterpiece.  It is an Avatar cake, with Aang's face on the cake.....Avatar in a cartoon on Nickelodeon if you were wondering :).  He did a great job!  Next time we'll know how to work with fondant a bit better...it got kind of crumbly at the end.

Party number 2

Thursday night after a fantastic Thanksgiving dinner at Ana's, we took off back to Ankeny. Friday Grace and I went down to DM and saw Princesses on Ice....Grace was in princess heaven! She loved it! It was really good, but pretty long. She got a $12 snow cone in a nifty Cinderella mug....that was the only overpriced souvenir she wanted thank goodness. Rich took Ben and Jeff to a movie and the big boys hung out with their friends. Saturday we had a party for Ben...he had invited his friends Jeff, Rachel, and Steven to come over for pizza, cake, and lots of Super Mario fun :).

Then Sunday we left early to head back to Bismarck......and it was over! It's amazing how fast the time goes. Thanks for a fun week everyone, it was so nice to be home!