Merry Christmas!

We hope that everyone had an incredible Christmas. We enjoyed what we have affectionately named our "gauntlet" of Christmas parties. Dax and Adelaide could not have been better about the week of unusual schedules and, though Jake and I both caught a bug for part of the celebrating, it was a really special holiday season. **After a truly wild week of celebrating, we had LOTS of pictures. Pardon the long post. :)

The week of parties started with Dax's preschool party. It was the Friday before Christmas so I was teaching, but Jake was able to take some time away from work to attend. After a short performance by the preschoolers, they got to have a treat and decorate a gingerbread house together. It was some special Daddy-Dax time!

It continued with the Augsburg girls and their families. It was a very different party than even last year with 7 kids running (or crawling, sitting and laying!) around. It was so fun to spend time with these wonderful people who we don't see often enough and hilarious to see the interactions of the kids. It's fun to imagine the future of this group.

Adelaide LOVED holding a real baby - she came back for more snuggles multiple times throughout the night

James, Dax, Addy, Ada, Franklin, Owen, and Jude (not pictured) made the party interesting!

Jake had taken the whole week off so we took advantage of the extra family time and headed to the zoo. It was a blast!

We also had a little adult time when I had coffee with my great friend, Cory, and Jake enjoyed watching the new Star Wars with his brother, Sam.

The party week resumed with the Olson family. Grandpa Duane passed away just a few weeks ago so there was an underlying sadness, but my cousin Mara did a beautiful job with the pre-dinner prayer. She paid tribute to the amazing man we were all missing, while also keeping it light. We maintained the focus on Jesus that Duane ingrained in all of us through reading the Christmas story from the Bible and sharing in some Christmas carols (with background jingle bell music from the great-grandchildren!). It was wonderful family time and, even though we left early, it was a great way to ground us in the Christmas spirit.

As we looked ahead at our week Christmas eve seemed to be the perfect time to do our family presents. Dax and Adelaide were delighted to find out what was in the packages that had been under our tree for the past few weeks and it was so fun to be able to take time to play with the toys after they had opened them.

Always ready to help clean the fudge spoon!

That evening we said goodbye to the elf, Red, and prepared cookies for Santa before going to church with Grandma Caren, Grandpa Phil, Auntie Shannon, and Robert. Then we partied some more at Gma Amy's house. It was another special evening of family time!

Christmas day brought presents from Santa, a sick daddy, and a yummy breakfast at Grandma Caren and Grandpa Phil's house. Dax could not have been more excited to open more presents and Adelaide was thrilled to open another doll with it's very own pacifier.

 

 

They were getting a little present crazy so we spent some down time that afternoon writing thank you notes and starting to organize the incredible amount of new stuff they had received.

Grandpa Duane's memorial service the next day was a beautiful tribute to his life, planned by him, and so completely filled with his spirit. Though it was a sad time in the middle of celebrating Jesus' birth, it provided more family time, a special goodbye, and a little closure for his death. We lifted our spirits that afternoon with the Schulz family.

The Sunday following Christmas was our final party with the extended Schulz family. It was my turn to be sick and miss some of the celebrating and Dax got a tummy ache shortly after arriving at the party so it was, unfortunately, cut short. We hope to see all of the people we missed there soon!

Whew! Our Christmas can perfectly be described as magical, special, busy, happy, exhausting, and wonderful. We are thankful for all of the special people we got to spend it with and were thinking of many many more of you as we celebrated the humble birth of our Lord. Though we're back to reality, the memories are close at hand and we are having fun exploring all of the new joy and imagination Dax and Addy's new toys will bring to our play. Merry Christmas to all!