Merry Christmas 2010!!

We had a wonderful Christmas Eve at our home with family and friends and today we are heading to Grandma and Grandpa's to spend the day with family!   The girls received so many items they love and Santa didn't let them down ... their beloved Princess & Me dolls are going everywhere with us!!!

Happy Holidays everyone ... much love from our home to yours!!!

Christmas Eve with Farmor and Uncle Olov ... via Skype!

Skype makes life a bit easier to share with our beloved Farmor.  Christmas Eve in Sweden is the "big" day of the two day holiday.  They are seven hours ahead of us, so when we called Farmor around 11 a.m. our time, it was 6 p.m. their time and Uncle Olov was busy cooking their dinner.

The girls opened their gifts from Farmor with her able to watch them and they even modeled a few of the items for her!  

They loved all their new clothes and winter coats and especially loved the scrapbook kits she sent each of them and are eagerly waiting a chance to print photos for their new books.

After the girls had opened all their gifts, they sang "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" for Farmor and Uncle Olov before heading back upstairs to let daddy wish his mom and brother a Merry Christmas or maybe I should say God Jul!

Christmas Eve Breakfast!

Well, after the closing of our favorite breakfast bar (The Uptown Bar & Grill) ... and the delay in the relocating, we decided to head South this year and found ourselves in St. Peter at Whiskey River for our annual Christmas Eve breakfast with bloody Marys and screwdrivers.  Unfortunately, due to another snow storm and a delay in the County snow plows clearing a path, Carrie and Kory were unable to join us this year ... but the rest of us made it to our destination thanks for State Highway 169 and its one clear lane!

It has been literally years since I was last at Whiskey River and I must say ... the food was okay, the drinks were good, but the atrium room we were seated in for breakfast was AMAZING!  We were seated in the middle of a  small room surrounded by huge windows and the view out those windows was truly wonderful.

There was a lot of land going along the river, but the fun part was the fact that the owners of the restaurant had about 30+ different types of bird feeders set up outside the windows and two large turkey feeders.  There were bird books and binoculars mounted at all the big windows and boy did the girls and the adults for that matter have a great time watching the birds which ranged from cardinals to blue jays to woodpeckers and, of course, lots of wild turkeys!!!!

The girls loved using the binoculars!

Breakfast was fun with the family as usual and it was a great way to kick off the holiday!  

After breakfast, we were off to return home to prepare for the family arriving later in the day!!!

Lunch with The Bangerts!

Terry and Lori surprised us with a phone call yesterday wondering if we had plans for the day, we didn't ... and so they made the trip up for a holiday visit.   We went to Spasso's for lunch and enjoyed wood fired pizzas and, of course, spaghetti for the girls!

Spasso's food was pretty good but the service was a tad bit slow, although that did allow for all us to enjoy a drink or two and have some conversation!

Terry and Lori surprise the girls with Christmas gifts which have been loved since the moment they opened them.  The extra large Tangled (Rapunzel) coloring/story books are a favorite as well as the Fuzzoodles ... so much fun!!!!!  Mommy and daddy were also surprised with bottles of wine, which we are holding for the next visit by Terry and Lori to share!  

Christmas with the Hokansons!

This morning started bright and early at our usual time of 7:15 a.m. but in a little different twist, we found ourselves at the Hokanson's Home by 9:00 a.m. to decorate Christmas cookies and exchange gifts between the kiddos.   The girls were super excited to find out where we were headed and what we would be doing there.

We arrived and got right to work in the kitchen with Tammy rolling out the sugar cookies and then cutting the shapes.  The kids were ready and in position at the kitchen table to start decorating as soon as the cookie sheets of sugar cookie cutouts were placed in front of them.

The girls seemed to really LOVE the pink sugar sprinkles and went to town producing many pink sprinkled cookies!

The boys had fun with holiday sprinkles and lots of tasting in between decorating.   We ended up with some great looking cookies and big smiles from all the kids!

The kids also had a lot of fun helping dip pretzels into chocolate and then decorating the resulting sticks.  Again, tasting with also a big perk to this project!!

Tammy and mommy finished up frosting the remaining sugar cookies and dipping the peanut butter balls.

Once we were done and had the kitchen cleaned up a bit, it was time to exchange gifts with the kids.   The boys seemed to like their Lego sets and the girls loved their new Lite Brites and Princess Cell Phones!

After playing with the gifts for a while, we had a great lunch and then just the let kids play and run around until they decided they had enough ... with three preschoolers and a toddler, you always know when the limit has been reached!  With a round of hugs and a cheerful Merry Christmas we put an end to our very fun morning and afternoon and put 2010 cookie decorating into the books ... what fun we had!!!

Dance Recital & Dinner at Dino's

Tonight was the "BIG" informal dance recital for the girls' and their Impulse Dance classmates.   We left home in plenty of time to stop and pick up Grandma and Grandpa who were happy to be joining us for the girls' dance debut on a real stage.

We arrived in North Mankato with time to spare and delivered the girls dressed and ready for the pre-show dress rehearsal.   While the girls were rehearsing, we adults headed over to Bobby Joe's for an adult beverage as we had about 45 minutes before we needed to be heading to our seats for the dance show.

We were very happy for Lori and Whitney (the dance instructors and owner's of Impulse) for the excellent turnout as they had to keep adding chairs for the audience!   The show started with the preschool class (which included Alyssa and Madison) doing a ballet dance to The Lion King's "I Just Can't Wait To Be King."   They were cute and adorable and did a great job.

Their opening dance was followed by four other classes who performed as well as a dance by Lori and Whitney.  For the big finale ... the preschoolers came back out in their tap shoes to perform "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" and were surprised to be joined by the rest of the dance classes as well as the big guy himself, Santa!!!

Daddy managed to video tape both of the girls' dances, although the second dance had some technical issues and only parts of it are there, but still ... cute anyway!!

After the dance recital was over, we took the girls out for pizza at their favorite Mankato Pizzeria, Dino's!

Grandma and Grandpa joined us as well and we had a great time.  Grandpa even showed the girls how to make Santa beards out of the pizza dough they were given to play with by the wait staff.

We had a lot of fun watching the girls dance and then enjoying a fun meal with family afterwards ... looking forward to the Spring recital to see how much more they change in their dancing by then!!!

Christmas Program at the Schule Haus

Today was the day the girls' preschool class had their holiday visit to the Schule Haus (senior apartments).  We arrived at 9:00 a.m. and we got to spend a little more than one hour doing arts and crafts with some of the residents.  There were many different stations to chose from and even though we managed to make quite a few crafts, we also missed a number of stations.

Daddy even got to join us this year as he was on long call (12 hour notice) and hadn't been called for a trip yet.  The girls were super excited to daddy with us again this year.

We met a wonderful lady named Rosemary at our first crafting table.  She had a brief conversation with the girls and Madison told her that she had a beautiful name.   As we sat with Rosemary, we worked on making faux stain glass windows in the shape of mittens.  Madison chose a purple mitten kit and Alyssa a light blue one.

A table with colored pencils and Christmas pictures caught the girls' eyes next and we made our way there and watched as the girls colored pictures of Rudolph.  After coloring our pictures, we found tables where we made wreath ornaments and Christmas light bulb pins.

Our favorite crafting project of the day was the scratch ornaments.  The girls and their friends had a great time scratching designs into the pre-cut ornament shapes.  They even had fun exchanging ornaments with their friends.

Finally it was time for BINGO!  Alyssa was having a tough time getting lucky with a Bingo win and her little friend, Mia, gladly gave her one of her reward candies to share.   Finally all were lucky with a group win on a blackout Bingo (all the kids had all the pictures on different cards, so all won that one).

With the Bingo fun ending, the kids were all lined up to begin their Christmas program which consisted of them singing Feliz Navidad, Jingle Bells, Up on the Rooftop, We Wish You a Merry Christmas, Santa Claus is Coming To Town and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.  They group did a great job and Madison even managed to be herself and provide some entertainment during the songs by demanding that we wave at her, requesting that her daddy put down his camera and clap ... well, you get the picture ...  she is our Madison after all!

Here is the video of the kids performance, just click below on the image to start the video!

The kids were treated to sugar cookies and juice after their program.  Madison was happy to grab the opportunity to sit next to her "boyfriend" Eli.

Alyssa managed to find her good friend Mia and enjoyed a snack with her at a different table from her sister.

When the cookies were finished and the juice was gone, we headed back out into the snow to head home, did I mention we woke up this morning to nearly another 7 inches of snow on top of the snow that we received last weekend ... it is definitely looking like Christmas here in Minnesota!

Gingerbread CASTLE!!!

The girls and mommy decorated our gingerbread castle today.  Mommy prepped the project the night before by gluing together all the gingerbread parts to form the castle (thanks to a store bought kit)!   The instructions called for icing them together, but really, hot glue worked just fine in mommy's humble, not Betty Crocker, opinion.  I mean, really, who eats these things?????   They are a harden sugar rock by Christmas Day anyway, so why not use glue!

So, today, we made the pink and white frosting, because a plain gingerbread house would never be good enough for the wanna-be Disney Princesses in our home.  We the girls enjoyed a couple of beaters full of frosting, mommy prepped the walls.

Once the walls were completely covered, the girls scooped sugar around the bottom of the castle to make sparkly snow and then we were ready to go candy crazy.

There was lots of finger licking and candy sampling during our decorating process, but we were all very happy with our end results ... Betty Crocker we may not be, but we can certainly rock a pre-baked kit, with a little help from mommy's hot glue gun!!!!   :)