New Traditions!

Playing a little catch up this morning...

This Christmas we decided to try something new...staying home for Christmas!!  Over the years we haven't minded traveling to be with all of our familes on the west side of the state, but this is 'hopefully' our last year at the west turnpike address so we decided to STAY PUT the weekend of Christmas and it was GREAT :)


Kiddos making sure the tree looks perfect!  This is my favorite part of Christmas every year--when they dig out all their orniments and talk about where they got each one from :)


The weekend or so before Christmas we got together with my folks and did some holiday baking--we did tons and tons of cookies and had a lot of laughs with Christmas music playing in the background, it was a great afternoon :)

This year we also had our First Annual Craft Club Cookie Exchange or (FACCE) ;)  We have had so much fun with the un-craftiest club ever this year and I think our first cookie exchange was a huge success!!

One of our other new traditions we adopted this year was Alfred the Elf!!!  He brought us so many laughs--he was kind of a naughty little guy, but he came with a great story and fun lesson--if you haven't heard or read the Elf of the Shelf story, you should definately check it out!!  Here are a couple of our fave Alfred memories....




Alfred told us this is how Elf's take baths at the North Pole...in marshmallows!!!



And one morning he left the kids a little note in toothpaste :)

Christmas Eve we looked for a candlelight service here in town, we ended up going to Good Shephard and it was a beautiful service!  Mom and Dad, Paul and Julie, Brooke, Todd, Casey, and JayLee were all there as well---it was nice to all be together :)  After the service we headed over to Mom and Dads appartment for supper and gifts!

Kiddos all ready to go to church!



Candle light service

For supper we had lasnagna, garlic bread, and a few salads--after supper the kiddos were great to want to hurry and get the dishes done and unto gifts we went!!! 



Josh got us matching Browns shirts :)

Christmas Day we woke up at home!  It was wonderful!!!  The kids ripped open their gifts and dumped out some very full stockings!!!  They must have been good all year as Santa brought some very nice things :)  Our other favorite thing we did that morning was make Santa Clause pancakes---we had a lot of fun!!!

We were so thankful for a wonderful Christmas :)  Some of the Kriege family were under the weather on Chrismtas Day so we had a smaller gathering for lunch and then Gma Alyce and Josh took the kids sledding for a little bit in the afternoon!