Christmas!

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in photos. Lots of warm, funny and slightly chaotic memories! 

Merry Christmas!

School Christmas Program

Earlier this month, we got to enjoy the Christmas program at the boys' school. Ben went to the morning show, since he had a basketball game that evening. So, my first stop of the evening was Levi's 2nd grade classroom. He showed me his desk, and every other single thing in his classroom that he had made. It's always fun to get a classroom tour!

Then it was show time!

The K-3 kiddos did a great job and sang some really fun songs!

Then the 4th and 5th graders joined and the everybody sang a couple of Christmas carols together.

Then Noah was up on stage with the 4th & 5th grade choir.

They sang some challenging songs and did a great job.

Afterwards, my goofball 4th grader showed me around his classroom. He made that larger-than-life Charlie Brown on the door. He was much more proud of it than his face shows in the photo.

The 4th grade had a beautiful tree in the middle of their room - full of Christmas cheer!

It was another fun program - it's hard to believe that half the school year is behind us already!

Piano Recital

The month of December, as usual, has been a whirlwind of activity. The school year goes by so quickly that even though we have a decorated Christmas tree in our living room, stockings hung and presents wrapped, I feel surprised to be only days away from Christmas!

 Earlier this month, the boys performed their piano pieces at their recital. Their teacher does a lovely job of organizing the recitals. She always has an older student help the younger ones to make sure their performance goes well.

 Levi's that little bit of red vest with blond hair at the piano. We sat at the back because we couldn't stay for the whole recital. He looked pretty small sitting up there on stage!

 After a handful of other kids played, then it was Noah's turn.

 Yep, he's that slightly larger speck of blue with blond hair. :-)

They both gave it their best effort and did a great job. It was impossible to tell from where we sat, but they both reported being nervous.

Thanksgiving Week

Thanksgiving week was a fantastic week full of all sorts of activity. We hosted Tim and Sue for the week, Andy and Lia arrived on Wednesday and Aunt Susan came out to the farm on Thursday! Sara and Josh - we missed you guys.

But, back to the beginning of the week:

Boxes? Yes. Did we move? No. But Ben's aunt did and we were her moving crew for a day. Moving is hard work and we worn out by the end of the day, but it was great to help her and see the lovely new place she gets to call home. 

The week was FULL of delicious food. Goodness gracious we outdid ourselves in the food department - and lucky for me I just discovered there's a whole container of these bad boys in my freezer! Grandma Schrag is famous for hiding cookies. ;-)

A week of hosting family is a lot of fun but doesn't leave a lot of extra energy for curve ball situations - like running over a dead deer in the middle of the interstate. But, that's what happened to Ben on Tuesday night. He was changing lanes on the interstate and ran right over a big, dead deer. The car was operational, but started to overheat due to radiator damage. The car was picked up on Friday and a week later it was all fixed up again.

Back to Thanksgiving week:

Levi had a marvelous time learning a few basic drumming tips from Aunt Lia. He soaked up that attention like a sponge. It's fun to learn from a credible, talented teacher.

When Levi wasn't busy asking people to play games with him, helping with a puzzle or putting on a show for us, he was often busy helping in the kitchen. He helped me make pumpkin chocolate chip muffins.

Noah was happy to hang around, but when adult conversation bored him he could be found playing a game on the PlayStation or watching sports on TV.
Thanksgiving morning the boys helped make breakfast! Noah frosted cinnamon rolls,

and Levi cooked up sausage! We ate a big breakfast on Thanksgiving so we weren't too hangry by the time our 2pm lunch was ready.

Our dinner on Thanksgiving was pretty darn special. Everything was from scratch - Sue and Lia and I worked to create a lovely meal that we got to enjoy together. Andy and Lia also made deeeeelicious pies that are not included in this photo.

Wilbur's cousin Otto was here from Chicago. Boy-oh-boy did those two play and run and play and run.

Doesn't Otto have a nifty coat on? Clearly, he's from up north - prepared for cold weather.

It iced on Thanksgiving. The rain fell and then froze....then on Friday is was fairly miserable, but the ice was thin enough that it was manageable.

Ben, Tim and Noah went up to Lincoln to watch the Huskers play football on Friday. Those of us who stayed at home kept busy all day and were often thankful to be warm and cozy inside our house.

While some people were out shopping for Black Friday deals, I was at home canning pears. A bucket of them was left at work for the taking, so a co-worker and I split them between us. And what else does a Mennonite do with free fruit? Can it, apparently. It felt odd to can pears in November....but we'll enjoy them this winter for sure!

Saturday morning, the house was buzzing. All our guests were packing up and de-icing their cars to head for home. Good for them because holy moly did our world turn into an ice rink that day?! Literally, our dull, dusty driveway and farm yard turned into a sparkling, perfectly smooth sheet of ice. It was an amazing transformation to watch throughout the day. We had a couple reasons to leave the house that day and there was nothing simple about driving in that weather, but we made it!
And then the power went out, and church was cancelled for Sunday so we got a puzzle out!

And watched the tree limbs start to fall....I don't have any photos of the ice yard...these are from Monday when the grass had already defrosted a little.

When the sun came out on Monday it was quite beautiful. Dragging huge tree limbs around the yard wasn't much fun, so I took a break to snap a couple photos....

The ice caused our power to be out from Saturday night until Monday during the day (I think...). The generator we had installed when we built our house turned out to be pretty amazing. It powered our whole house, so we hosted my mom overnight (Dad chose to sleep at their house). The boys didn't have school Monday and I stayed home from work. We invited friends over for lunch and then they helped us clean up branches while their kids napped and ours played. Tuesday Ben helped them clean up their yard. What a mess ice can cause! It created quite the exclamation point to our Thanksgiving week.