It's a Christmas post! :)

Here are some of the highlights from our Christmas Eve and Day!

We had a yummy fondue for Christmas Eve dinner with Dan's family.

Complete with a chocolate fountain for dessert!

New Pajamas!

All the Webster grand babies in their newPJs!

We attempted the traditional pyramid...

And read the Christmas story from Luke 2.

Ready to go to home to bed so Santa could come!

AND HE CAME!!

Here are two of McKenna's favorite gifts.

An electric toothbrush. Not for hygiene of course, just for play. She likes the way it feels in her mouth. :)

She also got a fake pet hamster that runs around.

After presents at our house Christmas morning, we went to Dan's parent's for a delicious breakfast and then presents with the Webster's. (You'll also notice the poppers on our plates which have a fun toy and paper crown inside.)

I caught Kenna snuggling with Grandpa Webster

McKenna was nice enough to let us know when she was ready for her nap. She crawled over to the diaper bag, got her binkie, and snuggled up to her blanket on the floor (though the plastic pliers was a first:] ). Funny baby!

I'm bummed I didn't get any pictures of Christmas dinner and presents with MY family...

We ate our traditional German pancakes with apple cider syrup. SO good! Then, we opened our presents together. My parents got Dan this portable workbench and McKenna loved crawling on the box!

Two wonderful days PACKED with family, thoughtful gifts, and celebrating our Savior's birth! How grateful we are for His life, mission, and priceless gift to us!

Merry Christmas!

Nelson Christmas Party and Progressive dinner

We had another fun weekend with two great Christmas parties. They were with the Webster/Nelson side of the family. There's always lots of yummy food and good company to visit with. We took our little "Santa Baby" with us. :)

Playing with cousin Reed

Besides food and visiting, there's also a Christmas Pageant. McKenna got to play baby Jesus last year. This year cousins Emma (Mary) and Russell (Baby Jesus) starred!

Dan had to keep McKenna entertained so she wouldn't disrupt the pageant.

Here's the big finale, complete with a Wise Men chorus, the star, angels, and shepherds.

And now onto the Progressive Dinner. Here are some fun cousins playing!

Another cute Christmas outfit.

We had a fun little program which included a sing along.

Some program pictures

And then, as per tradition, we made gingerbread houses!

I decided to go with a green theme for some reason.

Cousin Bath

McKenna and Whitney (2 months apart) had their first cousin bath together! It started a little rough because I rinsed Kenna's hands after dinner in water that was too hot. She had a hard time calming down after that. Therefore, I think she was afraid of the bath water too. Anyway, here are some pictures...

McKenna warming up to the idea.

Then Whitney had a little traumatic experience too. She leaned back a little too far to look at something and slipped under the water.

Soon, they both calmed down enough to play for a bit.

The water stream isn't actually going into her eye.

The classic mohawk shot!

She was ready to get out.

By the end you could tell it was quite close to bed time with sadness all around. We'll know how to make this a little more enjoyable next time. :)

I Hate, er, Strongly Dislike Winter!

Allow me to explain. I'm not a fancy writer or anything, so I'm just going to be frank. For as long as I can remember, I've hated being COLD. I hate when my whole body shivers. I hate that I get more head aches in the winter from keeping my shoulders up by my ears (this is my winter "posture"). I have poor circulation so my feet are always cold. I hate that my skin and lips get so dry. I hate that my hair is static-y. I hate that it gets dark so early. I hate driving on scary, snowy, icy roads. I hate that I get sick more often. I hate slipping and falling on my behind, elbow, and hands (like I did last night and now I can't lean on said elbow). Oh, and probably most importantly, I hate subfreezing temperatures that froze one of our pipes, burst, and flooded our basement! I guess life had been going just a little too well :)

Here's the pipe. It bust in two places at the same time, 3.5 feet apart from each other.

Pipe being replaced by Carl Pond Plumbing & Heating (Same day!)

Thank heavens I was home when it happened! Unfortunately, I didn't know where the water shut off was. By the time help (B-I-L David) came it had been running for about 30 minutes. (Thanks to my neighbor, Kellie, who came to my rescue as well!) We quickly began moving our things to the garage and upstairs so our "stuff" wouldn't be too damaged, if at all. There was so much water, it seeped into our neighbors basements on both sides of us. You could see our carpet practically floating on top of all that water. I didn't think to grab a camera mid-flow, but we did document as much damage as possible for insurance purposes.

Some of the damage

These next few pictures are of water damage ACROSS the room from where the leak was.

We punched lots of little holes to help dry things out.

Our misplaced things

Some of the many fans that were in our basement for 4 full days. In total we had 15 fans going at once...I'm not looking forward to our power bill!

It certainly could have been A LOT worse. Up until a few weeks ago all of my teaching materials were right underneath where the breaks occurred. We're thankful it wasn't worse and are so thankful to those who have helped us! Demo/reconstruction starts tomorrow; to be continued...

I'll try to be more positive in my next post. :)