Christiansen Chronicles

Wow!  It's already New Years Eve and I'm finally getting around to blogging about Christmas!  What a whirl-wind holiday.

Christmas Eve we went the day at my parents house. It ended up my mom got sick so we laid pretty low.  We canceled the Christmas Eve festivities, ate a quick dinner and came home.  She visited the ER with mysterious abdominal pain that night.  A week later they still aren't quite sure what was going on..but she is feeling better and at least she wasn't in ICU like last year!  YAY!

Before the ER visit and crazy pains the big boys (Grandpa, Wade and Gage) took off to the mountains to shoot guns.    They ended up finding a place full of skeets and they had a great time shooting them all up.






Christmas morning came early, of course, but they kids all had so much fun.  Can you tell Noah was excited? Take a close look at his face in this picture!


Santa brought Gage a new big bike.


Avery came down and ran straight for her loot.  The first words she spoke were, "pretty shoes!!!"


And Noah was stoked to get criss-cross-crash.  I have to admit I think it's pretty fun and it really has been the hit of the holiday break!






Grandma and Grandpa Christiansen sent everyone new blankies.  We wrapped in them and enjoyed some Christmas cartoons.



And Eli - well he just hung out, sucked on his two fingers and smiled most of the day.  He is such a cutie and a good boy!


Since my mom was feeling a little better we nixed the fancy Christmas ham dinner and headed down to their house to have the Christmas Eve birthday party for Jesus party.  Wade made crepes for us and Noah decorated the cake for everyone. We had a white elephant gift exchange and the kids loved getting their Christmas jammies although they were a day late.



Of course the highlight of our party was the Bullard Coke Challenge.  Someone had to bring Wade down.  I buckled under the pressure and let the kids play along.  Doesn't Noah look pretty happy that I'm letting him taste test all that caffeine?  He drank 4 cups (out of nine) grabbed his tummy and said "I"m full...I drank one...two...three...and four drinks!"


Dad was serious business.  (Actually I was sitting next to him and after every drink he would shutter and say "GROSS")  He puts up with us girls and our crazy antics anyway.  Thanks for playing along Dad!


Gage tried his best.


But in the end I stole Wade's glory!  Wa-Hoo!  I got 7 out of 9 right and I won the piston cup.


We had a great time enjoying Christmas this year.  I can't believe tomorrow will be 2011!  Time sure flies!

Each day last week I had a Christmas activity or craft for the kids to do.  One hit happened to be some Christmas sun catchers that I picked up at the dollar store.



No December seems complete with out a gingerbread house!  We don't go for kits around here...we go for the gram cracker kind and then completely cover it with sugar, frosting and treats.





Noah kept Grandma on her toes during this activity.  She helped him come up with a pretty good creation....it too got smashed less than 24 hours later.

The next morning I woke up to the sound of two little boys giggling down stairs.  They were busy eating their candy for breakfast.  It was pretty cute letting them think they were getting away with something:)


I caught Miss Avery Ann red handed shoving hand fulls of frosting and candy in her mouth later that morning!

Sunday we attempted to take some pictures of the kids in front of the Christmas tree. It went a little something like this:

She might look cute.  She  might look innocent.  But don't let that fool you.  Still it's one of my personal favorites because if you look close at her legs you will notice her tights all bunched up at her ankles.:)


If Noah weren't crying this one could have been a keeper.  We are so mean to Noah, he didn't want to put his arms around Avery.


This one is the keeper, even with Eli's poor face.  If you look close you will see that Gage is holding Avery back by her dress collar.


And last but not least, how everyone really felt.

We started out our December Festivities early on this year with a brand new tradition...hanging Christmas lights.  They aren't much to look at, but the kids think they are fun to turn on every night and love looking at them.  Honestly, I think Wade was just excited to get out on the roof and walk around.

Since my sister Jenny came for sisters's weekend..and then stayed through the holidays we've had lots of time to play with her and our cousin Daniel.  Last week we pretended we had an 8th seat in our van (illegally, hehe) and enjoyed the Spanaway Lights together.  I am not sure how Aunt Jenny felt about sitting on the floor, but Daniel was pretty stoked about sitting in the back with the big boys.


Of course, we enjoyed some pretty cool lights.  Since we went on Monday, right at opening we didn't have to wait in line to get in.  That was a big bonus, since I heard you have to wait an hour to an hour and a half on the weekends!

I have to admit, I was skeptical of anything in Spanaway, but the lights were impressive.  It reminded me of the lights at Grey's Lake in Iowa.


We can't forget about the nativity stories.  I collect nativity sets.  I have a couple the kids can play and each year, well, the kid nativities really get played with.  I always find the kids doing interesting things with them.  some years I document them, other years I just have a good laugh.  In 2008 I wrote down a few of the stories...if you want to walk down memory lane and have a good laugh, the links are HERE, HERE, HERE, or HERE.

This year has been no exception.  Fun things have been happening around our house with these nativities.  For starters, I never EVER in my wildest dreams ever thought I would have to say the words, "Noah...take baby Jesus out of your pants!"

Another morning this past month I found the boys lining up all the Little People and Veggie Tales nativity sets then crashing them with monster trucks.  I got there with the camera just in time to snap a picture of them getting upset that monster little sister joined the fun. (look at Gage's face in the background!)


And to finish off this first batch of 20-10 Christmas festivities you cannot forget the sugar cookies.  While Wade was off at a Residency Retreat a few weeks ago (I'm still kicking myself for not going too, but I was just not up to taking baby Eli with me on the trip)...we headed to my parents so the boys could make sugar cookies with Grandpa and Grandma.




Yeah, I'm pretty sure the cookies didn't last much longer than 24 hours!

More Christmas Festivities to come....