hockey perseverance

The day after Christmas, Drew played in his first high school JV hockey game.

Some great lessons learned these past couple of months is that hard work and perseverance do pay off. Drew is very excited to be part of the high school team!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was a family day. Just the five of us. And it was awesome! We spent the day at The Depot Ice Rink and had a blast just skating around.

We attended Christmas Eve service at our church which is always so special with the live animals.

We had our newer traditional Christmas Eve dinner of take-out Chinese food, 

which is the boys absolute favorite!

We all bundled up in blankets and had a family movie night watching 'It's a Wonderful Life.'

And we finished the day off with the tradition of me reading

 'Twas the Night Before Christmas' to the boys. :)

And to all a good night.

{sights of the season}

decorating

shopping

winter weather 'enjoying'

Christmas cards writing

Christmas movie watching

choosing the new 'ornament of the year'

wrapping of presents

stopping at Macy's 8th floor

Christmas present giving

and receiving

cookie making

and remembering the 'reason of the season.'

a Viking game

A fun day at the Viking game yesterday. 

It was the 2nd to the last home game in the Metrodome--and they even came out with a win! 

{memory lane} Christmas tree farm

The story and the memories of why we went to cut down our own Christmas tree down this year.

We have had the same pre-lit artificial tree for many years and each year we have been battling it more and more to get the lights to work. We decided that we would buy a new tree this year.

A couple of days before Thanksgiving, Pete and I went out shopping to try and find a new pre-lit tree for our house. We spent many hours and went to many stores but really didn't find anything we loved. We went home a little discouraged and started discussing that we might purchase a real tree this year. And then we started reminiscing about how once, when the boys were little, we took them to a tree farm to cut down our own Christmas tree and decided that it would be fun to do again this year.

These pictures are from 15 years ago; December 1998. Drew was 1year old, Jake was 3 1/2, and Tyler was 7.

Priceless memories!

it's snowing!

So pretty!

Thanksgiving weekend

All of these shoes at the back door can only mean one thing...

all of my boys are home!!!

Tyler came home around 3pm on Tuesday. His girlfriend Maria gave him a ride and it was so nice to sit at our kitchen table with the two of them and chat for a while! Jake rode the Alumni club chartered bus home from school and arrived at home around 2:30am on Wednesday. A 12 hour bus ride! Yikes!

Wednesday was spent getting a lot of errands done, like much needed haircuts for the college boys. :) That night we had a family Christmas movie night and Tyler also got us hooked on the show 'How I Met Your Mother.'

Thursday we watched the parade and went through all of the Black Friday sales while eating some homemade pumpkin bread.

That afternoon we headed over to my parents house where we had Thanksgiving dinner with the crew.

On Friday, we went to cut our Christmas tree down at a local tree farm. We haven't done this is 15 years, so this brought back a ton of memories from when the boys were little... and it was so much fun! (We missed having Tyler and Jake there due to work and a Turkey Bowl.)

(The tree is super prickly so I wore some gloves while I lit the tree. :)

Bella even helped out. :)

1400 lights later and all is lit.

Now to rest a bit. :)

On Saturday we prepared to have our own little turkey dinner. We put in a smaller turkey with some of the fixings.

Then it was time to decorate the Christmas tree.

I love these guys and am so very thankful to be their mom!

Sunday morning came too quickly.

But our house will be alive again in just 3 weeks! :)

(The other title that I had for this post was 'the best weekend ever' which is what I kept telling Pete all weekend as my mama heart was so happy and full!)