Christmas at Grandma Mary's

Annual Christmas PJ pictures. No tears, noone running off, it was a Christmas Miracle!

Julie reading out of the Bible in memory of dear Grandpa Dave.

Mikko got some awesome Thomas the Train crocs from the Amundson Family. Not sure we'll ever get them off his feet.

Super cool ornament from Grandma Mary

Thomas! He may have said Thomas the Train 100 times wanting to open the box.

Mikko and Leah showing off their new shoes.

Yeah! The girls won the picture game again.

David and Sophia doing the egg race.

Dusty and Daddy's turn.

Leah's ball toss game.

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We spent a fun evening at Grandma Mary's playing games, eating, and opening tons of presents. The kids were all great, polite, and we had a very successful photo shoot. Thank you Grandma Mary for making a special evening for all of us.

Festive Day

My merry co-workers!
I rounded the corner at work at 8am to find this guy in our area. Freaked me out for a minute. Mark pranced around the office all morning and we had many laughs.

Mikko came to the office for a little bit today and joined our Feliz Navidad food day. He was so much fun and kept saying Merry Christmas to everyone and was just so delightful and polite. My little prince charming.

Christmas and Dusty's Birthday

We spent Sunday evening celebrating Christmas at Mandy's house. The kids ran and ran and ran.
Checking out the goofy singing toys.

Kid's Table.

David got an awesome race track. He couldn't wait to go home so we could set it up.

We got Leah some light up pink cowboy boots.

Do you think Mikko likes the train he got?

Uncle Bob helping Mikko with his new Thomas flash cards. He got every gift Thomas the Train themed. Mikko Heaven!

David instantly fell asleep in the car on the way home but his head popped up the second we got home remembering that we could set up his race track.

Ugly Sweater Contest 2011. There were some great contenders this year.

Uncle Bob's "Frosty" look took the prize though.

We celebrated Uncle Dusty's Birthday!

We had a very fun night, the beginning to a great holiday filled week. I love being part of Damon's awesome family.Thanks for hosting us Mandy and Corey.

Unsuccessful Toy Purge

I attempted to have David go through all the toys and get rid of stuff he doesn't use to make room for the influx of toys he'll be getting in the next week. This is ALL he could come up with. I put the quarter in for scale. So we got rid of roughly 8 square inches of toys.

Grandma Opal would be proud.

I spent the afternoon at the Fraser's making lefse. Greta even helped out.

Bobby kept us company playing Angry Birds.

Then I headed over to Tracy's for our Gustavus Xmas get together. This year's theme was ugly pajamas. Lots of fun.

David forgot to tell Santa that he wanted a rocket so we sent him a letter yesterday.
Bathtub before (it had a plastic insert placed over the original tub which we removed).

Bathtub after. Damon's friend Shane did this. Looks amazing!

We are hoping the whole project will be done by the end of next week. Cabinets need to get installed, then counter top and then they can finish up the tile.

Getting closer

Most of the tile is in. They will grout today but have to finish up the rest of the tile after the cabinet and countertop go in. We will be back in our house for good tonight. Yeah!

Disney on Ice

Love that Greta wore her Snow White dress. She was so excited when Snow White came out.
Popcorn and Mini-doughnuts.

The boys both got pirate swords and Greta got a snow white necklace.

David watched with amazement and sat the whole time. He really loved it. Especially because he got to sit between Bobby and Gretzky.

Hockey Practice

Mikko played with trains most of the time. He also loved to drink water out of David's water bottle. He was like a little hummingbird.

David playing goalie.

Visiting Santa

This is pretty much how I envisioned it would go - there were no expectations!

That is a little better - we were far enough away from Santa so that Mikko stopped crying.

He did show off his tree ornament Santa gave him.

Here he is giving Santa the evil eye as we approached the front of the line.

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Today we went to the MN Zoo to visit Santa. Loved that you didn't have to pay for pictures and both boys got a really nice tree ornament. David told Santa what he wanted. The elves will be busy the next couple weeks finishing up David's requests.