Skip to main content

christmas day at barb & paul’s

(otherwise known as “ana and elsa’s” to my kids.)

after breakfast, quick showers, packing up clothes, jammies, and gifts, we loaded up in the car and drove south to my cousin, barb’s house. we got there around 3. my parents and aunt marilynne were already there, as well as my other cousins, lynne & jim. there was chatting, and munching, and drinking of spiked cider going on. soon, mike and marie showed up with baby liam, and everyone applauded! LOL. gotta love having a baby around! after that, caitlyn and her fiancé, danny arrived and that was everyone.

we had traditional hedvall family (my mom’s mom’s family) swedish christmas dinner of halibut and sausages, along with other yummy fixings. then we sang carols (which was both beautiful AND hilarious), paul lit the candles on the tree, and finally opened presents.

we got gift cards and the game, qwirkle (which I’ve wanted for the last 2 years!), layla and micah got some toys and accessories for their rooms, shane got an awesome rc helicopter (along with other BIG boys mike and danny – and when all the presents had been opened, they all disappeared outside to try them out)and the game clue. we gifted my cousins with IOUs for envirosax packs that were hung up in the mail, and the scarf and mittens I knitted for my aunt.

as always, it was a blast, and I’m excited that we’ve reinstated this tradition with my mom’s side of the family. 2011-12-252

Comments

  1. Rach, It's especially fun now because there are little kids again! SO GLAD you make the trek down for this.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

all comments are moderated. unkind comments will be deleted.

you may like...

for my not-so-american friends

i didn't have an actual roll w/ the green plaid on it, but i found a refill and an empty roll in my junk drawer (yeah, i know, that should tell me something).  but even the empty one says 'scotch' on it.  there you go!  SCOTCH TAPE!

a blue period...

i'm feeling really lazy lately. well, some might think i'm lazy all the time, but it's worse right now. i always get really down on myself when i'm having trouble keeping things organized, when my house is a mess, when we eat mac and cheese for dinner, etc. usually that's appropriate motivation to get me off my butt and make me keep things in some sort of relative order. but night now it's really bad. i don't feel like doing anything. there are toys all over, and i purposely make myself not see them because i just don't want to pick them up. same with the dirt behind the door in the bathroom. the pile of clothes that need to be ironed, the mess in my bedroom, the crap falling out of the drawers in my bathroom, the garage. i don't want to go grocery shopping. i don't want to cook. the floor needs to be swept and mopped in the kitchen and dining room and the sink is dirty. the backyard is a total disaster and i just don't feel like ...

how to clean your room

i was discussing this sort of thing w/ my MIL recently and she said there were some books she had when the boys were young that explained things to kids that adults often tell them to do w/out giving them explicit instructions. so i thought about it and decided to write my own.  i mean, really, if i expect shane to clean his room, i ought to tell him HOW i want him to clean it, so he knows what i expect.  so i wrote them out.  keep in mind, these are 9 year old instructions. they would have to be adjusted accordingly.  i actually don’t expect him to do much less than i would expect of myself.  (bummer for him!) How to clean your room: strip your bed. put all dirty clothes in the laundry basket put all clean clothes in the closet or dresser put all shoes in the rack on the door. pick up everything off the floor and put it on your bed to sort. start by throwing away anything that’s trash. return anything that doesn’t belong in your r...

holiday?

so i’ve had a skeleton of this post bouncing around in my head for a couple of weeks now. i’m not even really sure what the point of it is, or what my opinion on the matter really is, except that it’s something that’s kind of irritating me. have you noticed that christmas has been, more or less, completely deleted? listen to your radio. watch the commercials on tv. read the ads in the paper. nothing. it’s like ‘christmas’ has become a dirty word. now before anyone gets their dander all up, this is not a particularly religiously-inspired post, not that i disagree with the idea that ‘Christ’ should remain the center of ‘Christ’mas.  but that’s not what this is about. i’m a ‘word person’. i love language. i love the idiosyncrasies that that come with spoken and written language. i love that humans have the ability to string letters and words and sentences together to create something beautiful, or funny, or clever, or ANYTHING! it’s just a wonderful thing. i love that we can trace say...

finally!

here are layla’s curtains!  actually up on the window! i have to say i’m quite pleased with myself for actually getting this done.  but i have to give credit where credit is due… so thanks to my MIL for going to the fabric store w/ me and helping me with measurements and all that.  AND, thanks to debbie for letting me use her sewing machine and for ironing all the hems for me!  YAY!!!!