Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts

12.27.2012

Christmas Day!


















A glimpse into our Christmas day. After the family party, we got all the gifts wrapped and under the tree. There was a snowfall over night so the world looked christmasy. The kids had a blast checking out their new gifties and liz and i got the spread on the table looking good. We had local cream and chocolate milk as well as local sausage and bacon from the smokehouse here in town. Then we had lots of NZ lollies and treats. A sampling of yummy icecreams and gelato not o to mention pancakes, fruit salad, and bagels oh and juices. Later for dinner we had local cheeses and meats, spreads and crusty breads. It was sooooo good.


Christmas Eve Family Party















K80 & JD hosted our Christmas Eve dinner and we had a quite a crew. Mike & Pete manned the BBG in the frigid weather. I wish I had gotten a picture of them. We had lots of yummy food and our second annual talent show with a good variety of talent from the kids. Somehow we even managed to get a picture with all of us. 


12.29.2011

Christmas festivities.


Sugar Cookie Decorating
Christmas Eve Talent Show (new tradition) including Ninja moves video & Lil' Bunny Foo Foo Dramatization 
Christmas Morning
Graham Cracker Houses
My favorite Christmas shot
and due to a distinct lack of shots of our girl in this post, one of Rocky











 







The above shot is my favorite from Christmas this year. It reminds me so much of my busy little boy. Within 5 minutes of the tree being up he had found all of the pom poms on the garlands he could reach and bunched them together in these little clusters. It makes me laugh finding these and  watching him busily and very seriously "woking" on the tree.

Christmas 2011 was a success and already feels like ages ago, not just a week. We had a wonderful family gathering on the Eve. We did some caroling and hopefully Rich got some fun shots to share from that. Every time we went to house, Lars wanted to take off his jacket and boots. It was fun to see the kids sing and the people at the doors light up. That is definitely a fun new tradition and then we gathered for our traditional hamburger and rootbeer floats. Mike special ordered some gingerbeer which is a fun new kiwi addition to the tradition. Then we had a little talent show which brought us some bollywood dancing, some tap, some ninja moves, a dramatization of "Little Bunny Foo Foo" and a slideshow from 2011. There were several other random talents in there and Rich was asked to narrate LBFF about 3 more times for the kids. 

Christmas morning was short and sweet. I tried to make the room feel fun with balloons and streamers and candles. Lars was genuinely thrilled by it all. There were lots of excited "oohs" and "ahhs" as he ripped through the gifts thanks to his adoring grandparents in New Zealand and New Mexico and the free chain saw Grammy Lyall found for free at the local dump. Our little girl slept through the whole thing and I wasn't about to wake her up to take a family picture of us looking exhausted.  Next year, we have decided to not put the candy out because we couldn't keep Lars out of it. He had handfuls before I had cut of his supply.. He was jazzed. Hey, it's Christmas. We are still enjoying our NZ supply of goodies that was sent over by liz and in the post-Christmas letdown where you can't quite get the energy to get back to work after gearing up for the holiday. I am giving myself through New Year's and then it is back to it! And because there was a distinct lack of pictures of Rocky in this post...


Here's to a positive, less stressful, exciting (but the good kind of exciting- not the broken pipe, broken bone, broken car kind of exciting) 2012.

12.24.2011

Happy Christmas!


It's been quite a year. Time to relax and celebrate! Happy Christmas to our family in New Zealand today. 
Mike special ordered some Ginger beer to take to the family party tonight. Each sip reminds us of NZ. Lars loves it--just like his dad. We are going to do some caroling, some hamburger eating, and some talent showing tonight. Sounds like a fun Christmas Eve. 

12.21.2011

cutie kids










Wow, Christmas is nearly here! Lars and I made sugar cookies today and are making graham cracker houses tomorrow (I don't like gingerbread). He has no idea what this whole Christmas thing is but I know he is loving all the extra treats. He'll get just close enough to Santa to get candy canes so he's go that all figured out.

These are a random smattering of pictures from this last week. I love the little outfit our girl is wearing. I am not big into putting babies into headbands but this outfit that was given to us had one and of course when I put it on her little red head, I just couldn't get enough. Cutie!