Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

What a wonderful holiday season. As usual we crammed a lot into three weeks of fun. We had the Kemper Christmas in Melrose the entire weekend prior to Christmas. It was great having the entire family together! Great grandpa and great grandma Welle were also able to stop by and Santa came shortly after!  Santa brought special pillows for each of the grandchildren!

 

  

On Christmas weekend we stayed home as a family of four. We were planning on doing so prior to the storm, so we were lucky in that the storm didn’t alter our plans too much. Grandpa Dean and grandma Dede did stop by on the Wednesday evening and we had a nice Christmas celebration with them. It was a little strange have just the four of us around on Christmas, but we were able to spend a nice, relaxing Christmas together and really appreciate each other. On Christmas night, last minute, we had dinner with the Mikkelson's. It is so nice having “family” down the street (especially in a snow storm!).

Last we celebrated Christmas with Brad’s family the following weekend. It was nice to have nearly his whole family together at our house. Brad did an amazing job with the meal and again everyone enjoyed a nice relaxing afternoon and evening hanging out. We were able to Skype with the D.C. Budde's while we opened gifts.  It was as close to having everyone there as we could get! 

We also hosted a NYE party at our house this year and themed “Married with Children NYE”. From the looks of our kitchen below you can tell everyone had a great time.

And now we are back into regular time. I will have another update soon, but Mabel continues to talk and add new words to her vocabulary. She has perfected giving us dirty looks as well (see below). Louis loved Christmas and was sad to see it go. However, he was quite afraid of Santa and wouldn’t come downstairs on Christmas morning until I could assure him that while Santa was in our house…he was now gone and was at someone else’s house. As I said last year, experiencing Christmas through the eyes of a child is such a gift. The pure happiness and glee would melt anyone’s hearts!!