Post Christmas Post

Hubby and I are in the post-Christmas mode. That involves lots of laundry, vacuuming, putting away Christmas decorations, eating leftovers.

I called lunch today "Christmas Dinner, Take Two".  Here's the line-up waiting for time in the microwave.

We had a wonderful Christmas. We started out the celebrations with traveling to Iowa the weekend before Christmas to celebrate with each of our parents and siblings. The drive down was not fun as there had been a big snow storm the day before and the roads still weren't very good. But Hubby was a good driver and it took us an hour and a half longer, but we made it. We enjoyed the time with our extended families. Caleb and Amanda met us there. The grandparents were happy to see them as it had been quite a while since they last did.

The storm left behind some beauty:

The drive back north was much, much better, especially since Megan and Zach were driving up here to celebrate Christmas with us all! I texted Megan when we turned onto the interstate and she texted back that they were only 6 miles behind us. Couldn't have timed that if we tried!

Sunday night we enjoyed some yummy spaghetti and a craft time. I got a crazy idea to look for a fun, easy, cheap craft on Pinterest and this is what I came up with:

Note to self: dollar store clothes-pins are really cheap for a reason. Bad, bad quality. But they still made interesting snowflakes.

Some people where a tad excited about the craft time:

Such a goof.

I found our craft box when I was looking for some paint brushes. The kids had fun remembering some of the things in there.

 See that red zippered thing with colored pencils in it? I used that when I was a kid. There are also some different kind of crayons from when Hubby was a kid.

I found a couple of things of Play-Doh in the craft box that was still fresh. I think it's been in there for a good five years. Zach used it as a visual-aid to explain to Hubby about something in his car that needs to be fixed. It made me giggle.

Puppy came along and had fun playing in the snow and provided lots of entertainment.

A couple of mornings his people went out to go snow-shoeing in the field next to our house. Puppy was sad and looking out the windows the whole time. He had some pretty funny sounding whines.

We opened gifts on Christmas Eve since Megan and Zach had to head back for work on the 26th.

Puppy had a gift to open and went at it until he got out the toy.

I discovered this photo where it looks like the Puppy was helping Caleb open his gift. Silly.

We very much enjoyed having everyone here to celebrate. We are thankful they were all willing to travel up here so we could all be together. All of those kids are so special to us. My cousin wrote on his Facebook page about how their in-laws complete their family so perfectly. I believe that is true for us as well. Our kids spouses fit in and complete this family as if God planned it that way.... Hmmmm.... ;)