With time for one more stop

Since we flew in/out of Durham for our flight to Chicago, we had a two night stopover with the Durham Hawkins. It was wonderful to see how much Caitlin is growing and learning!! She's even doing "army crawl" now, so watch out - if she sees something nearby, she can make her way to it pretty quickly. Isn't she cute in her little floral bandana bib?

Don't get any ideas, Uncle Pete. We're Carolina Blue in this house!!

Since we were still in the 12 days of Christmas, we even had an afternoon to open stockings and exchange a few presents. It's very important to get Nutella in one's stocking. And in general to litter the living room with ribbons and papers and happy sounds.

And then the cousins came

We were SO glad that the Brink cousins came up from St Louis (after they spent Christmas with their family in Memphis) for the last two nights of our visit. We parents enjoyed seeing how much the cousins loved playing together, usually involving chasing, squealing, Legos and stuffed animals. And it was good for us adults to talk about life over the last year and what may be coming for 2018... with uncertainty for both of our families. Somehow we try to hold to hope and not worry about what is two or three steps ahead - but just take the challenges and process one thing at a time. (Sadly we didn't get a good family photo of everyone this time!! Argh!)

Nonna with Millie, Hawk and Elsie

Jim and Granddad took the oldest three over the the campus gym for a 'game' of soccer and run around the track. Boy it's cold out there!!! So glad we have a gym we can go to!

a fun morning at the Lego play-place

On our last afternoon some new snow began falling and everyone rushed out to play before it got dark. Perfect end to our trip!

Mattias did pretty well shoveling, too!

Christmas - in which all the adults...

...get their photo taken with the cute baby in striped pajamas!

And meanwhile the older two had a wonderful Christmas Day getting ALL the attention from their grandparents.

new re-usable sticker books!

 

After stockings, cinnamon rolls, presents, Christmas books, and more playtime with GI Joes, everyone was ready for some quiet.

Christmas tradition for kids

Great fun for the kids (and adults, too) is to decorate small houses with candy and icing. Even the littlest guy was happy (but don't worry, he didn't eat any candy). Jim grew up doing this as a kid, and I believe it was one of our date activities in college one year.

Mattias was very precise about the placement of his candy, and loaded it up on every surface.

Christmastime!

Christmas in Wheaton with Granddad and Nonna - what a wonderful time we had! It was our first Christmas there since Mattias was a baby (yes, that makes 4 Christmas visits where each of our 4 babies had their first Christmas there, so I think we know what to expect now with babies and Christmas celebrations...). One of the highlights was the beautiful snowfall we had on Christmas Eve, which was on Sunday. We were the only siblings/cousins in the house for Christmas this time (until the Brink cousins came for two nights at the end of our stay).

Of course Mom decorated the house so lovely  - every room of the house and even the bathrooms had cute Christmas decor and lights. The only exception was that she saved the tree until we arrived so we could decorate it with the boys. They loved going through the boxes and hanging up the ornaments. You could certainly spy which sections of the tree (at about knee level for the adults) had been thoroughly decorated by Timo and Mattias.

Most of the 9 days that we were in town were VERY cold (single digits temps) but thankfully Nonna pulled out lots of toys from the attic, so the boys stayed happy and busy indoors with the toy kitchen, micro machines, cars, old GI Joes and tanks, army figurines, muscle men, and lots of books. The first day, Timo kept repeating, "I'm so happy, I'm so happy" as he pulled out army guys and cars.

Mattias loved the kitchen and insisted on wearing the chef hat and serving us food on little plates and cups

Look who is sitting so well and pulling toys out of the box!

the GI Joes from Jim and Steve's childhood were a HIT (thank you, Mom, for saving these for 30 years!)

On Christmas Eve we went to the morning service at church, and then played outside in the snow. (Well, more accurately, the men played/worked outside; I went out for 5 minutes and then hurried back in for another cup of coffee.) Thankfully some friends loaned the boys snowpants and boots! What a peaceful, beautiful morning.

Timo shoveled snow with SUCH enjoyment! He worked for quite a while and pretty thoroughly cleared the sidewalk in the front and along the street. Later he told me, "See, I can do that now. You know why I'm so strong? Because I eat all the food you give me."