A Merry Little Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas. On Christmas Eve, we attended church service with Deb's parents at Grace in Grantsburg. It was good to see many of the people who we attended church with five years ago! The church looked beautiful, the music was inspiring, and the tradition of different families reading parts of the Christmas story brought back memories of our time at Grace.
The church was lit with candles and lights, which reminded us of our wedding almost 12 years ago (Dec 30th). Boy how time flies, and life changes!
Noah started running a slight fever at church, which caried over to Christmas Day. He was bummed, and spent a good portion of Christmas Eve resting and watching tv. We enjoyed eating and visiting with grandpa Henry, mom, Jill, Tom, Taylor, and Jordan.
On Christmas Day, we celebrated with Dennis, Sue, Patty, Trent, Brody, Jim, and Aubrey all at our house. It was good to see Jim and Aubrey! We all ate too much, and then a crazy game of Catch Phrase broke out. Everyone enjoyed some good laughs!

Watch out Grandpa Henry...Here comes the troops!

After church today, We (mom, Jeff, Deb, Noah, Jake, Lydia, Jill, Tom, Taylor, and Jordan) all headed over to Grandpa Henry's house for lunch. The kids had a great time wrestling, which provided entertainment for grandpa. No blood, and only a few tears. After lunch we tried sledding and snowmobiling. The "Kitty Cat" that Jill and I received as a Christmas present in 1974 is up and running again. Not quite the same power it had back then, but the kids enjoyed driving around grandpa's yard. It brought back lots of memories of the hours Jill and I spent driving around our house in town. One on the snowmobile and the other on skies or in the sled behind. Many tanks full of gas were spent on that little machine. (Jake is driving in the picture)
We all cheered on the Vikings at our house, but they could not prevail. Now it is out of their hands. They are at Denver next week and need a win along with a Washington loss. The kids had a great time playing and we look forward to another fun filled evening tomorrow night!

Basketball and Chritmas Programs

We got our first taste of an all day HOOPS basketball tournament. It was a lot of fun, but a LONG day. We headed out aout 7:00 am and returned home at 7:00 pm. The team played well. However, they lost a close game in overtime to Hudson, WI. in the first round. The team came back and beat Rush City in the second game. Prescott, WI was a tough team and really pounded on our guys. This put us in the 5th / 6th place game. The guys pulled out a close one against Somerset to take the 5th place game.
Jake and Lydia commented on how boring the games were, but liked the idea of eating between every game : )

Sunday brought the Kid's Christmas program at Joourney North Church. Noah, of course, would not smile. But Jake and Lydia did a great job of singing! We then headed over to aunt Pat's for the Lindquist Christmas. We decided not to do gifts this year, which was a great idea. So we sat around and ate while the kids played. Lots of good eatin'!

ROCK ON!!!!!

The kids, and Deb too, have been giving Guitar Hero a work out. Lydia can play 'Slow Ride' while walking around the house and not even looking at the tv. Lydia went to a "Happy Birthday Jesus" party tonight. She had a good time and likes to be the social butterfly.
Jake is doing such a great job in school. We are very proud of him. He absolutely LOVES math! His teacher has made him a packet of extra Math problems to work on when he finishes his assignments, and he does these 'extras' whenever he gets the chance. He is working on some multiplication at home and WANTS to keep learning more. I sure wish kids would stay this inquisitive and have that desire to keep learning - by 8th grade, most of the students want to do just enough to get by. Very few WANT to be challenged. - Guess I didn't have a stellar day today. Just cannot believe how the work ethic of students has changed over the years....So keep up the good work Jake!
We are all looking forward to Christmas break... only 7 more school days!

Let it snow, Let it snow, Let it snow!

Well it has been almost two weeks since the last entry. Since then we have accumulated quite a bit of snow. Enough to plow the driveway twice! Last weekend we got dumped on, so we did not travel to Noah's basketball tournament. That was a good thing since as the day went on the roads got to be in terrible condition. We even cancelled our church service on Sunday morning. The township finally plowed our road at about 6:00 pm Sunday night - yeah, so we could be on time to school. Then Tuesday night we got a few more inches, and again the roads were horrible. Many cars in the ditch on the way home from Negotiations with the school board.
You may have noticed that there are no pictures lately. Lydia fell while looking at pictures on the camera and bent the shutter pretty bad. I thought I had it fixed, but now the flash doesn't work! We decided to get a new camera and picked one up today (the battery is currently charging). This one is shock proof, water proof (you can take underwater digital pics), freeze proof (ub to 14 degrees), and dust/sand proof. This is our third digital camera in five years, so we will have to see if it can withstand our family!
Noah had his last 4th grade basketball tournament yesterday. They played well against two of the teams, but fell apart in the middle game. Oh well, 5th grade tournaments begin next weekend. He is looking forward to playing with the older guys.
Last night we had a relaxing evening. We are cuddled up on the couch and watch National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation with Chevy Chase. We all had some good laughs, but I forgot about some of the language in it. The kids repeated lines from the movie today, but luckily none of the lines had those 'four-letter words' in them!
We went to Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis today for a Christmas Concert. It was a special concert for families featureing the Minnesota Orchestra who just this past week receive a couple Grammy nominations. The concert was great and the kids enjoyed the music and other entertainment. They also enjoy walking around the skyways in downtown Minneapolis. I need to get them down there more often to experience 'City Life'. : )