Christmas Time in New York

Christmas has come and gone again, here is what it was like in 2015.  Joshua had his winter holiday concert.  He was very focused in his singing, and he had a solo reading part, which was super cool. 

I also had to make a ton of gingerbread cookies, because they are my favorites.  We did give most of them away.  But I still enjoyed the dough and the cookies we kept.

Minna and Miriam helped with the icing before we delivered some to their friends.

Of course we decorated.  We have to buy special batteries for part of our Christmas village.  The day they came in and we turned everything on Miriam was mesmorized.

Brian had to work nights over Christmas, but he did have the day that the kids had their school Christmas parties off, so we went to both of them.  The kids had fun making crafts, and Miriam got to participate too.  She even got to play a game with Joshua's class. This is the only picture I took from the whole day.

The kids had school on the 23rd, kind of lame.  But they had been begging to have a sleepover in some giant boxes that we have.  So we let them try to sleep in them that night for Christmas Adam, because on Christmas Eve it would be too hard to get them to sleep.  None of the kids ended up sleeping in the boxes, but they had fun hanging out that night till one by one they went to their own beds to sleep.

Winter has been slow in coming this year.  I am not complaining.  Christmas eve was especially unseasonably warm.  I took the kids to do our annual tradition of bugging the neighbors and dropping off food for them on Christmas Eve.  It was so warm we walked the whole time, and took off our jackets about half the way through.  Everyone was will to chat for a while, and I think it had to do with the warm weather.  The kids even got to go and feed one neighbor's fish in his pond.  I love doing this because it is fun to say hi to the neighbors and it gets the kids out of the house on the day they are super wound up.  This year they also burned off some energy too.

Christmas morning Joshua woke up at 5:45 a.m. Evidently he didn't run enough the day before.  He snuck downstairs and saw that Santa had come and went back upstairs and woke the girls up.  Minna was mildly upset that she didn't wake up to see Santa, but got over that quick.  The kids ran downstairs, and checked out what Santa had brought them.  They got new PJs, which they put on and proceeded to wear for 36 hours straight, new crayons, a new flashlight, and some chap stick and pistachios.  Then they wanted to open presents, but Brian wouldn't be home from work until 8:00, so they had to amuse themselves for a couple of hours.  They were pretty good.  

 

Brian came home and we had to rush through presents a little more than normal because he wanted to go to bed after working all night, but it was okay.  Joshua had the year of the Legos. 

Minna and Miriam got dolls and clothes

Minna got a stuffed cat with kittens.

And Minna got stuffed elephants to feed her obsession with elephants. She now has most of an elephant family.

 

The weather was still pretty nice, so after the kids had had plenty of time with their new toys we went outside to swing. 

Later that afternoon I got to Skype with my family who is all spread out in Utah, Panama, and Chile.  My brother is on a mission in Chile and we only get to talk to him twice a year.  I brought down Miriam to say hi, and she was not impressed with the whole thing. Until she saw Heather, then she got super excited because she could see, "that other girl!!!".  I reminded her that she is Heather, and Miriam went running away looking for Minna (who refused to show her face the whole time).  Miriam was yelling, "Its Heavver! Heavver!!".  Then we had a delicious Christmas dinner with ham and pineapple.  It was a really nice Christmas.