Christmas vacation

Here's a couple pictures of what we've been up to. We had a great New Year's celebration with some family and friends. It's been snowing A TON, so we had a couple fun snow days. And since we can't be outside all the time, we've had some good making-desserts-as-a-family-days. In between everything, Chris has been taking every opportunity to continue with our entrance way. It's pretty much only the floor and painting the walls left! I don't want to show pics until it's completely done, so you'll just have to wait. Hope Christmas vacation was great for everyone!

Picture Slideshow:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/58104106@N02/show/with/5343076020/

Sofia Turns 4!!!

Wow, yet another year has come and gone and our little 3 year-old is no longer 3, but 4! This year has been great for Sofia and she is blooming into quite the little lady. We love our Sofia!

Dance Stop

You know the game when you have to dance, then when the music stops, you have to freeze?

Because both my parents and Chris's parents are in the States this year, we had the opportunity to have our "own" Christmas and invite whoever we wanted and do whatever we wanted for it. We choose to have the missionaries over plus a couple friends who were away from family. It was one of the best Christmases we've had. Unfortunately, our camera was low on batteries, so we don't have that many pictures and no pictures of Christmas Day...:(

We have the best of two worlds here and got to celebrate a Swedish-style Christmas the 24th with a huge smorgasbord of food quipped with all the swedish favorites of meatballs, prinskorv, janssons frestelse, cold ham and brussels sprouts. We enjoyed eating together then after everything was cleared away, our friend Erik said he was going out to get the newspaper, and we heard a knock on the door. It was Santa (or rather, Santa's helper...the kids are catching on)!!! He had come bearing gifts. We all sat around as he, Samuel and Sofia helped hand them all out. Everyone was excited and had a good time. After he left, we played the White Elephant Game where Sofia got a flashlight (exactly what she wanted...seriously...no one dared steal it from here because she really, really, really wanted it) and Samuel walked away with 3 Donald Duck comic books!!!

After desserts and games, the kids went excitedly to bed because as soon as they feel asleep, they knew that the American Santa (or as the kids say, the real santa) would come and leave the rest of their presents. Christmas morning, we woke up to a tree full of presents and we all took turns opening.

Christmas has been good this year as I've been trying extra hard to focus on the true reason for the season.