Finally the weather calmed down...

By Sunday the weather seemed calm enough to attempt a trip down to Owatonna to exchange presents with the Boyces. The boys were thrilled with their new games and toys. Here are the 2009 Christmas Boyce and Hagen family photos.

Merry Christmas!

Our Christmas plans had to change quite a bit since we did manage to get a snowstorm here in Minnesota. Christmas eve with the Waceks/Boyces has been rescheduled for Sat. Jan 2nd and so we went to Mass on Christmas eve afternoon and then had a quiet evening just the four of us after the boys added baby Jesus to the creche.

The boys opened their gifts this morning and have been playing (and fighting) ever since. They each got a Vikings t-shirt and a Chuck E Cheese $10. gift card. Connell also got a Backgammon game and a mini pool table. Liam got a little parking garage for his Matchbox cars and a cash register (those are all the presents from Santa and within our family, too)

Merry Christmas to everyone reading my blog!

Sledding

Christmas eve day was perfect for sledding at the neighborhood sledding hill! Ray and I went with the boys and a few neighbors and their kids. Thank God for the warming house afterwards and the hot chocolate that Marta made them to have with cookies! (Ray didn't make it into any of these photos that Brian Fendrich took).

Christmas Decor

I thought I would share a couple of pieces of our extremely minimal Christmas decor around the Hagen household. We don't decorate a lot as we have very little room and the boys are infamous for destroying things.

We do have our Little People Nativity set adorning the fireplace mantle. It's been up since the first Sunday of Advent and we chose not to put baby Jesus nor the three magi in it until the appropriate time (so the boys will add baby Jesus on Christmas morn and we'll add the kings on the Epiphany). We purposely do that to remind us of Jesus' coming. Well, the reason I thought to put the photo was because when John Henry was here yesterday, he looked at me and pointed to the creche and asked in a serious tone, "What happened to Jesus?" Then I explained it all to him, but given that he is only 3 1/2, I'm not sure if he understood the whole story!
Our Christmas tree went up for the second year now (we didn't start putting one up again until Connell was 4 and Liam was 2 for obvious reasons -- well, obvious if you have spent any time around our curious, energetic boys...) So here is the tree. And I have often talked to many of you about how simple we have tried to be in our Christmas and gift giving for the boys' sake. To put it into perspective... this tree has under it everything among the four of us, presents for all the Boyces, presents for Ray's mom and Tom & presents for 4 of the boys' cousins. We already had some Christmas celebrations and so several presents are gone. Santa will bring one thing for each boy as he always does and that will be it.

Liam entertains

Liam had his friend John Henry over for 3 1/2 hours this morning. They played inside and I took them out back sledding for about 30 minutes. We also got our winter gear back on to walk up the hill to meet Connell off the bus. Connell took one look at John Henry and asked, "Who's that?" It was a fun morning.

Liam's Christmas Concert

Liam had his preschool Christmas "concert" this morning at church. Although he doesn't look very happy in these photos, it's mostly because the lighting is so bad in the sanctuary that the photos never turn out. He did a nice job of pretending to sing (or actually singing) and behaved quite nicely.

Weekend Recap

Luckily the snowy weather took a short break for the weekend to allow us to make the 2 1/4 hour drive to Little Falls for Christmas with Ray's dad and wife. It was a fun afternoon. The boys had fun playing games and playing with their new toys. Liam got a GeoTrax portable track and train and Connell got Othello and Battleship. It was nice to see everyone. Ray's grandma Hagen came with aunt Sheila and her husband and so it was a nice size group.

Yesterday afternoon the three males put up the Christmas tree while I paged through hundreds and hundreds of Connell's paper scraps from the last year trying to decide what was worth keeping and what needed to be recycled or thrown out. Connell is the "king of paper" in developing his own games and somehow there are scraps all over the house. We had been throwing them in a bin when people came over just to get them all out of sight and so it took HOURS to sift through them all. Of course Connell didn't want to part with any of them. There were also about 10 partial decks of cards in the mess from which I was able to create 2 full decks. Argh. Someday I have to go through our real paperwork to figure out what to shred or keep and yet just keeping up with Connell's paperwork is nearly a fulltime job.

This week is quite full with Ladies' Night Out, several church programs and meetings at church, ECFE, last-minute Christmas prep, etc.

Santa's lap

The boys sat on Santa's lap at Michael's (the Arts and Crafts Store) last weekend. It was the first time that Liam wanted to and he didn't scream. Connell told Santa that he wanted the games "Pictionary" and "Battleship" to which Santa honestly said, "Oh, so you're a game guy, huh?" Liam froze and couldn't think of one thing he wanted (which made me happy because at home he keeps talking about the obnoxious Rocky the Robot truck which he is most definitely not getting!) But the $2. photo they took for us is perfect for the scrapbook and turned out quite nicely.

Bring on the cold...

I picked up a pair of double-bladed ice skates for Liam (or Connell -- although I think they are too small for Connell) the other day at the thrift store. They were about $2.50 and white and so I bought a bottle of leather dye and dyed them black so that they looked like boys' skates. We have another pair from last year although those don't have the double-blades on them. I'm not sure that ice skating will be anyone's calling in the family (I was pretty good in my day although I think my skates need some serious sharpening before I try them this year).

Right now it is snowing here and there are 7-10 inches expected here by early tomorrow. I wouldn't mind except that I have a dentist appointment in the morning to get to (and I was counting on both boys having school as planned on schedule to be able to go to the appointment alone). I might need to count on a neighbor to take the kids for an hour if there are any changes in the school schedule because it would be hard to reschedule my appointment.

OK - I'm hooked

Now I'm just thinking of more ideas for the softies I've been making. My latest is called, "The Magi". Here are two different renditions.

Of course one again it became a teaching moment as Liam looked and exclaimed, "Three Josephs!" He was only 2 last year and so he doesn't remember much about the 3 kings or the Magi I should say. This year will be fun since both boys are old enough to really internalize some of the concepts!

Catch-Up

Well, I better get everyone caught up to speed now.

Thanksgiving was spent in Annandale at Ray's aunt and uncle's house and the word was that there were more than 25 people there. The next youngest cousin is in 5th grade so my kids were really in the minority and everyone doted on them. It gave me a chance to sit back and relax and enjoy the silence! On the 90 minute car ride both up and back, the boys caught a movie on the new DVD system Ray purchased for the car.

After Thanksgiving, I spent many hours finalizing my part of a presentation for my Catholic Parents church group that I presented this morning (Tues. the 1st). I co-presented with an elder in the parish and we spoke about the Catholic Liturgical Year. Her main focus was to have historical info about how the feast came to be and I supplemented with tangible ideas and topics to use with young children. We were given about 75 minutes to present and we went a little over. We rushed through many parts and so really I see the entire presentation lasting 2 hours (with a break in the middle) when done properly. It was organized and was well-received. Whew. Now I can breathe a sigh of relief. If nothing else, it is preparing me for getting back into teaching full days!