Christmas...2012

Christmas morning didn't start till 7:00 am this year!!

At least that's what time Ashton called me into his room. When I went in, he said he'd been up since 5:38, and that he'd "Heard Santa!" "First whipping the reindeer twice!" "Then walking down the hall." So he got up and went and listened at the door and almost went out, but decided he better not. :) I loved listening to him that morning and imagining how he felt with his heart racing...so excited!

He had to go in and wake up Gunnar, then I made them stop and take a picture at the top of the stairs before they ran downstairs.

 But not before they had seen a couple things and ran around excitedly talking about what they got! I was sad we didn't have the video camera running to capture all that first excitement, but I was still half asleep.
Anyway they were both so, so excited that Christmas was finally here! And about what Santa, and Mom & Dad had left out for them.

Ashton got his Lego Harry Potter DS game, and Gunnar got Yoshi's Island for the DS that we got from Hunter for him.

 They both also got these new snowboards...

And they got Mario Kart for the wii to share. We got them the Razor 360 bikes and a few other things that we wrapped up.

 They unwrapped everything pretty quickly, then we had our cinnamon rolls and waited for Grandma, Grandpa Harry and Aunt Kelli to arrive, then opened the rest of the gifts with them.

Funny gift Grandpa Harry made for Aunt Kelli...

 I surprised Lars with a new fly tying vice..

Beautiful picture Kelli took of Grandma :)

  I loved Grandma & Grandpa Harry's gift to them...Grandma collected LOTS of rocks in her yard over the past months and Grandpa Harry polished them, then she put them in these cute boxes for them with cute little notes. They love to collect rocks!

And they each got another new Webkinz...a frog for Ashton and a pig for Gunnar. Gunnar didn't put his new pig (who he named Boinky) down all day!

 And Aunt Kelli got them some much needed Lego building plates...

They also loved their new Harry Potter lego sets from Grandma & Grandpa in Texas!

I had started to have a sore throat on Christmas Eve and by Christmas morning felt pretty yucky.

It was so nice to just relax at home all day. We made a big dinner of turkey, mashed potatoes & gravy, deviled eggs, rolls, broccoli, stuffing (that Grandpa brought, as well as her special dessert), and I can't remember what else...but it all turned out great!
Then Lars took the boys up to the big sledding hill to try out their new snowboards...which by the way turned out to be very frustrating to them...mostly Ashton because he couldn't get the hang of it, so they didn't last too long. They had first tried them out in our back yard...

While they were gone to the big hill.. Mom, Harry, Kelli and I watched Emmett Otter and all of us but Kelli fell asleep. I was really not feeling good by that point.
Anyway, not too much later they all had to head back to Evanston so the boys just played the rest of the day before bed.
We love Christmas!

Christmas Eve...

We had a really fun day on Christmas Eve. We got up and got ready for the day then headed over to the new trampoline park in town called the JumpZone. We hadn't been there yet, but my cute friend Randi texted me a few days before saying that her brother had rented the whole place out for a couple hours on Christmas Eve morning and told her to invite whoever she wanted.

The boys absolutely loved it! And it was fun for me to get to sit and catch up with Randi...we haven't seen eachother in way too long.

 After our time was up, we went to lunch at Angie's restaurant and watched the snow coming down out the window. Oh yeah...we got A LOT of snow on Christmas Eve!

After lunch, we went home and baked our Christmas cookies and the boys spent awhile decorating (and eating!) them.

Then after playing for a little while, it was time to get ready for mass.

I say it every year, but I love going to mass on Christmas Eve. Ashton and Gunnar were so excited for the next morning that they had a  hard time sitting still, but they did okay. We took up the gifts this year too, so that was nice :)

It snowed and snowed even more while we were in church...the roads were totally covered as we drove home. What perfect Christmas Eve weather!

That night as usual we let the boys open their Christmas pajamas and an ornament and this year a movie to share.

Then we made a quick dinner and ate and watched the movie...

The Nativity. It was a cute little movie about the birth of Jesus and I was glad it held their attention the whole time!

Then it was off to bed...the one night of the year that they go gladly. 

Of course we had to put our cookies and milk out for Santa...and the boys got so slap happy, they couldn't stop laughing...haha :)

 I love the anticipation on Christmas Eve! So fun!

My little helper...

My cute little Gunnar delivered every single one of my neighbor gifts for me :)

Last year at a dollar store that was going out of business I picked up these cute Christmas card address books and fuzzy candy cane pens, all for .10 cents each!!

 It was a fun night driving around with him.

 He would run up to all the doors and ring the doorbell, say Merry Christmas to whoever answered, hand them the gift and say "You're welcome" when they thanked him, then run back to the car to do another one...

I think we handed out 25 this year!

I love you Gunnar :)

First ice-fishing trip of the season...

 A couple days before Christmas, we went out for our first ice-fishing trip of the season. It was a beautiful day up in Idaho at Treasureton, but really slow fishing. Thank goodness for a little hill and sleds...the boys had fun for awhile sledding.

 We weren't even getting any bites for a long time, so they had zero interest in fishing. Can't blame them. They wanted us to set up the tent, so we moved after awhile and got it set up for them.

 I was fishing inside the tent while they played in there and got warm by the heater, and Lars was fishing outside. I was almost falling asleep when I saw a couple of really big fish swim by my line...it was really shallow water and when you have the tent up, you can see down in the water really well.

 The boys stopped what they were doing and came over to see the big fish (that Ashton descibed as "BABY SHARKS!") swimming around.  One of them kind of bumped my line, but neither one ever would take it. Fun to watch them for a few minutes though. Lars came over and gave me a different rod with a different jig on it and sure enough when I dropped it down, one of those big fish came over and took it right away...

That was the only fish I caught all day. Lars caught one other one and that was it.

Time to head home. Fun to get out :)