Brennan's Godmother visits

I may have to increase that number of christmas's from 7 to 8 as my best friend (of almost 30 years) and Brennan's godmother walks in the door with a clothes basket full of presents!  Auntie Deanna was here from Virginia, and came to visit for the evening with her parents (aka my 3rd set of parents).  And, Deanna and I finally found something we have in common (we are total opposites), neither of us like the crust on pie!  Wish we could see you more often Dee!

More Christmas's

The rest of christmas day we spent with troy's parents and troy's grandfather - this is a 4 generation picture.  Kobe had some fun outside in the snow!  Then the weekend after christmas we spent at my parent's (Heidi's), opening presents, playing games, and everyone staying overnight and going to church the next morning.  Also took a family picture at church, everyone except my hubby, who just had to slip out to the vikings game!  :)   Six christmas's down, one to go in january!

Christmas Morning 2008

Jesus is Born!  What a wonderful morning.  I actually was quite impressed that we didn't have any super early risers (we better enjoy it while we can).  Kobe put out a plate of homemade toffee (we figured santa gets enough cookies), and the next morning when we woke up daddy (I mean santa) had left just a few crumbs, he must have been in quite a hurry to get to all those houses in one night!  It was another fun day, as you can tell I had a problem picking just a few pics.  Of course we opened their "santa gift" and stockings BEFORE having mommy's homemade carmel rolls (yes, another tradition, mommy obviously loves traditions).  Oh, and that is a sled they are sitting in, a 12 ft?  Okay, I'm exaggerating a little, but it was huge, all 4 of us could ride in it!

Christmas Eve 2008

We've started the tradition that Christmas Eve is family time.  It was wonderful, daddy worked in the morning while we got ready at home.  We went to a beautiful service at our church, Hosanna at 3pm, then came home and ordered chinese (another tradition).  After eating, we went outside to move around, then came inside and opened gifts.  It was a blast - Kobe expressed how excited he was about EVERYTHING, and Brennan LOVED opening gifts (he wasn't as concerned with what was inside).  We followed it with hopefully another tradition, hot chocolate with candycanes to stir it.  Yum!

First Christmas Concert

Kobe just had his first christmas concert on thursday.  It was so exciting and adorable (yes, mommy's tears of joy were flowing)!  Kobe was a perfect angel, we were expecting him to get up in front of everyone and be shy (like at the pumpkin parade), but he did great, singing, and even doing a lot of the hand movements.  Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Krass we got front row seats!  Those teachers are amazing to get 18 three/four year olds to sing for even a 7 1/2 minute program.  We are looking forward to next year's 9 1/2 minute program!  :)

Our Sweetest Kobe

Kobe has been such a sweetheart lately, I just had to share a few of his "sayings".  He's been telling me "mommy, thank you for making such a nice supper", or "mommy I really like the christmas decorations, they look really nice", or he'll tell us "you did a great job with that".  While we were hanging the ornaments on the tree, he was into "this one is so sweet" , "Mommy, isn't this one sweet", or "Oh, sweet", over and over, about a million times, no exaggerating, about every ornament, troy and I had to hide our giggles.  He had preschool earlier that day, obviously someone at school says the phrase "sweet" all the time!  

One more to share quickly - mommy started a new tradition, St Nick, for those who don't know, you put your shoes out at night before you go to bed, St Nick comes and fills them (growing up, we always got ornaments, but I'm going to do christmas PJ's).  So we put the shoes out, and the next morning, Troy went to get Kobe out of bed, and he said "daddy, I don't need many presents, I already have a lot of toys, santa should bring you and mommy presents instead".  Isn't he the sweetest?  He will still say these things when he's a teenager, right?

16 ft Christmas tree

Unfortunately this year, for the first time in 10+ years, we didn't get to carry on our tradition of cutting a christmas tree down together as a family.  Since the boys had been sick with flu/colds daddy took on the load all by himself.  Being the daddy he is, he found the biggest tree he could (attendents at the tree farm vouched it was the biggest they'd sold all year), and loaded it all himself.  Yes, it is actually 16 feet, and yes, we really had to use a 2 story ladder to decorate it.  Brennan didn't know what to think when we brought this huge thing into the house, but so far he's just ignored it (he did enjoy walking through the ladder though).  Kobe really got into decorating the tree this year, not only the ones on the bottom, but insisted on climbing the ladder to hang some as well (all 5 on one branch of course)!  There's nothing better to put you into the christmas spirit than the smell of a fresh cut tree!