Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve we always have a Danish Dinner. We have pork (yum), potatoes (yum), green beans (yum), rolls (yum, yum, yum), homemade applesauce (eh), and braised cabbage (gross). Mom and Dad love it all, but us kids just eat the good stuff.



After dinner, we have a dessert that has a hidden almond in it. If you find the almond in your dessert you win a special prize. Our Grandma always makes a real Danish rice pudding, which Dad likes best. But, Mom thinks that putting sugar in rice is disgusting, so she's always trying to think of a different dessert to put the almond into. This year we had banana cream pie, and Harry found the almond! He won Hungry, Hungry Hippos.

After all the yummy food, we have our little family Nativity. We read the Christmas story, and sing lots of songs, but for us kids, it's all about dressing up! This year Maren was Mary


Harry was Joseph (and a shepherd)


and Norah was a "Wise Woman."




Our Mom liked it that Joseph wanted to hold the baby all night.



Then, we FINALLY got to open some presents that came all the way from Utah. It's always fun to open presents from Grandma Veloy and Grandpa Dennis and our cousins. Harry and Norah kept fighting because she wanted to play with his R2D2 toy and he kept stealing her Little People Princess Castle. Go figure.

Right before bed, we left out cookies and Diet Coke for Santa. We know how to butter up the Man in Red!

Our Christmas Video Card

Norah lost a tooth

Just kidding. She just ate a brown crayon, but doesn't she look funny?

And here's a picture for the Grandmas out there. Mom says we're so cute we make her sick! She's weird.

Snow Day!

Our Christmas vacation started a day early! We woke up on Friday morning to a phone call from school saying that we had no school. We ran to the windows to find.... NOTHING! No Snow at all. Well, the weatherman was right, and by later that morning the snow was falling fast. Check out the awesome fun we had!

Kicking off the Season

We had a ward Christmas party last Saturday. Here's Maren with her friends C and P.



Here are the pictures of our Primary Choir. From the keen attention they are playing to our Mom, you can imagine how great they sounded. Can you see Mom's hand in the corner of the picture? She's fighting to get those kids to SING!






Then Santa arrived and all was right with the world.





Well, not Norah's world. She didn't want a thing to do with Santa. This is the one and only picture that exists to document her Santa experience.

Decking the Halls

We got the Christmas tree up last weekend. Here are some pictures of the great job we did.







We needed to get Dad to put the star on the top of the tree. It's a good thing our tree isn't any taller or we'd have to get a ladder.



This is the bottom of our tree. Isn't it great that we can pack so many ornaments into such a concentrated area? Our Mom didn't even rearrange the ornaments when we went to bed, but Norah is working on pulling them all off.

Dad's Big Day

We celebrated Dad's birthday this week. He's kinda weird and likes apple pie more than cake, so that's what we made. Us kids ate ice cream, but Mom and Dad say the pie was DELISH!




Maren also wrote a poem in his honor.

Daddy
Fun Smart
Caring Running Playing
He is really great.
Dad

A kid's gotta do what a kid's gotta do

Our Mom has been REALLY grouchy lately. Until she starts getting a little nicer, we're having to watch our backs, even when we sleep.

Norah Paints the Town

Like my tag? I have spent the last few days swiping any pen, pencil, marker, or smearable food to put my mark all over the house. I have marked my territory on walls, floors, books, refrigerators, the new kitchen cabinets, book shelves, hymn books, dad's students' tests, scriptures, and even myself.

Peace Out,

Isn't it ironic, don't you think?

On Tuesday night at dinner, I spooned a serving of canned corn onto Harrison's plate. He took at look at it and asked "what is that?" My response: "That's corn Harry, you like corn."

"Oh" said Harry "like a cornucopia. Sometimes we call a cornucopia a horn of plenty."

Maren then chimes in "Yeah Harry, but the stuff on your plate is corn." She was totally unimpressed.