The One Where They Celebrate Christmas

The Christmas Season kept us hopping again this year. We love spending time with our extended family for the holidays. I also treasure the time we carve out to celebrate with our own little family of 4. This year we were able to do it all.

Our Christmas celebrations started with a performance of "The First Leon" by the New Life Church kids. Noah participated in the choir and Austin had the opportunity to be the narrator.

Mark and I had the privilege of participating in the Zarletti Family Christmas with the New Life Church choir. It was a full service of music hosted by the Zarletti Family. It was an awesome experience to sing music written by Pastor Vinnie and performed for the first time at our church.

For Christmas Eve Mark and the boys went to his Uncle Lyle's house to share with the Berghuis family in their traditional Christmas Eve celebration. I was at church preparing for the Christmas Eve service, so couldn't attend. After the Christmas Eve service we came home and had fondue desserts and snacks. We watched the movie "A Christmas Story" and laughed until our sides ached.


Christmas morning we slept in. There are certain advantages to having older kids! We had a leisurely morning opening our gifts to each other. We had our traditional breakfast of pancakes made by Mark. Every year he makes special Teddy Bear pancakes for the boys. Something went wrong in their making this year and we all had a good laugh at Mark's Mutant Bears. In the past we have put a candle with them and sang "Happy Birthday" to Jesus. I wasn't able to convince anyone to do that this year.

Christmas afternoon and evening we spent with my parents in Waconia. It was a nice, relaxing afternoon just hanging out together and enjoying each others company. There also might have been a nap or two sneaked in!

On the day after Christmas we hopped up to Milaca for Christmas with Mark's family. Mark and Austin snowmobiled up and I took the truck and trailer to meet them. We had a fun time of opening gifts, playing games, and hanging out. Austin and Noah don't get to see Alex and Brittany as often as they would like, so they take advantage of every minute.

I also took the chance to play beauty shop with niece, Brittany. She wanted to go with a subtle red. The end results were....interesting. After a few minutes of panic, it was decided that Mark would go home and the boys and I would stay the night so that I could figure out how to correct the color. When all was said and done, her hair turned out. Whew! That's one more Christmas memory for the books!

We had to wait another week to celebrate Christmas with my family. We celebrated our Laugerman Christmas on January 1. It is always fun to get together with John, Rita and their two adorable kids. Noah loves playing with Johnny. Since he is the youngest grandchild on Mark's side, it is fun for him to be the big kid with his younger Laugerman cousins.

We certainly are blessed to do lots of Celebrating for Christmas!