It’s Christmas

Mark agreed with me on the “favorite” Christmas decoration at Grandma and Grandpa’s house.  I don’t remember who gave this to my parents, but it seems that we’ve had it just about for forever and I always looked forward to getting it out.

The kids slept in really late for Christmas.  I was really surprised!  Mark above was just coming in at 8:30.  As everyone came in they checked out their mittens.  A few of the favorites were: a journal for dad of his and David's correspondence during David’s mission, and some bath toy for Neil that swim.  I also made everyone a “Thankful Notebook” for the year of 2013.  I decorated the fronts of each of the notebooks differently and was really happy with the outcome.  I’m not sure how everyone else is doing, but I’ve only missed a handful of days in the last month and I just love the feeling I get as I ponder what to write about.  I am so blessed!

Heather and her family brought over breakfast.  Fancy french toast and juice.  It was delicious.

Then close to 10 am “Christmas morning” started.  There were 17 of us packed into my parents living room.  We all ohhhed, ahhhed, opened, thanked, laughed, admired…..it was a really nice morning.

Neil actually got tired of opening presents, grabbed his binkie and blanket and laid down on Ken’s lap.For lunch we had a delicious Christmas dinner with all the works.  Even hollandaise sauce – I love that stuff!Then we played, read, and poor sick Ken napped.We finished off the evening by starting to read “A Year Down Yonder,” by Richard Peck out loud, a book my kids got for Christmas.  It reminded me of being at home as a child and listening to Dad read to us from the couch after dinner while we cleared the dishes.The day after Christmas Rachel, Jessie and I got up early to go do baptisms at the Kansas City temple.  As it turns out we read the schedule online wrong and they were closed (but in 2013, they will be open the day after Christmas!).  So we took a picture to prove that we tried and drove back home.Then we packed up the kids and went to check out the Federal Reserve bank in KS.  It was pretty neat, but also very frustrating. Rachel didn’t bring her purse, since she didn’t drive and couldn’t get in because she was over 18 and didn’t have any ID on her.  :-(.  So she took a nap in the car while we were inside.One wall had all the different coins issued under each president.There were coins I didn’t even knew existed.  Like the Half Eagle, Quarter Eagle and the 3 Dollar Gold.Some cool horse money from the Civil War Era.

A counterfeit money display.And a wall of real money! $40 Million to be exact.  They had quite a few fun things for the kids like making your own money on the computer and as crayon rubbings.  And you could watch people working on a machine that counted money and checked for counterfeits.  It went a hundred miles per hour.  It was really amazing, but they asked you not to take pictures….so we didn’t.  There was an armed cop or two milling around just incase to needed a reminder…luckily we didn’t.

That afternoon we did all kinds of fun things.  We cut out snowflakes, made wood projects from Lowe’s that Heather brought over, played more games, did some wood carving, and worked on wooden puzzles from Dad’s new wood book he got for Christmas.

Someone even did Jessie’s hair all fancy for her :-)!

If you can’t remember what was severed for breakfast, just look at Neil’s smile for a clue.

On Thursday we went Kaleidoscope at Crown Center.  We meet my cousin and her two kids there.  My mom got a lot of cool pictures, but I didn’t get copies of them before we left.  I was busy helping the babies and watching over the stroller.

Afterwards we toured the Hallmark card center.  Putting a stamp on the passport was Neil’s favorite part of that (unfortunately most of the ink pads were all dried out.)  They also had some really fun Christmas trees on display.

and of course the bow maker machine.  We really tried to limit it to one bow a person, honest!While we were at Kaleidoscope Ken, Mark and Conrad went to Lego Land.  Lots of fun displays made of Legos, and a good idea, but not a very well planned out place (especially for the price). Oh well, at least for Mark’s sake he didn’t have to do arty stuff with us.

Mark found a new hobby while we were in Missouri.  He was in heaven with Grandpa’s scroll saw.  Lucky for us we have grandpa’s old one at our house.  After Mark’s discovery he was down in the basement most of the rest of the trip.

We broke our drive back home into two days.  Look at the cute sleepers!When we got to the hotel we needed some diapers, so when Ken went to get them I asked him to grab a fun ice cream treat for us to share.  Well it took a little longer than he had planned on account of no stores being open at 10 at night and I guess the kids were all tried from just sitting in the car (and some of them were getting a bit sick too) that by the time Ken got back everyone was sleeping.  So I did my part and had two that night, and two the next morning because the kids weren’t in the mood for ice cream for breakfast…poor them….any way Neil finally ate one so I wouldn’t have to eat all of them.The scenery on the drive home was beautiful, but even beautiful mountains get a little boring when there are hours left to go.  The really funny part was that Heather was coming out to visit us for 10 days as one of her Christmas presents and she beat us to our house.  So we were still in the car and she was calling us wondering how to turn the water heater back up so she could take a shower.  :-)