December, part the second

We have two Christmases the weekend before the 25th, and when the 25th is on a weekend, my birthday (the 17th) coincides.  *sigh*  Michelle brought me this amazing chocolate cake with ganache  and chocolate mascarpone.  And I forgot to bring it home.  gah.  (Mom and Dad came to my rescue and brought it to me the next day.) 

Wyss Christmas- starting things off right with a brunch induced food coma.

Oh, hello there.

There were presents.

More presents.

And little boys who really, really liked Jack and Logan's new toys. 

More presents.

Perrin thought the redneck ring toss was pretty cool, although he threw the rings away from the antlers.  :D 

Second cousins, and a third cousin. :)

The Roy W. family was getting together on the other side of the fellowship hall, so we all sang a few songs together. (Where the 3rd cousin belonged. 😂 They were all so excited- Mom, we met our THIRD cousins!)

And of course games.

The Beutel Christmas was the following evening.  Perrin and Miri pretty much stayed back with the toys.

 

There were crafts and music.

And it was my birthday, so I excused myself from dishes and cleanup... other than eating cake, it wasn't much of a birthday. blah.  Haha.  Not the worst though... as the girls reminded me, I wasn't in the hospital! 😋

This is a cute light.  Not sure if we'll use it or not, there is some disagreement over which girls like which light. 

I hadn't written down the menu for the week and someone took it upon themselves to quote me.  :D

Poor Miri goose wasn't feeling very well- she felt slightly warm, and was abnormally quiet.  So when I thought to ask if her throat hurt and she said yes, we headed to get a strep test.  It wasn't all bad; Octonauts and a popsicle while we waited.

Then we got to wait some more at the pharmacy and ran in to Mary picking up meds for her kids... who brought Strep to the Beutel Christmas?? 😆😜

Orbeez and Paw Patrol = happy Cadence.

Miri was feeling better, but she was only allowed a very small bowl of "sick orbeez." 😜

We did the festival of lights, which everyone loves.  Perrin was making all kinds of hilarious animal noises.  :P 

Then we took a rather circuitous route home because we wanted to use a DQ gift card and there aren't any DQ's handy... Perrin put about as much in his hair as in his mouth. 

They are cleaning out Grandma B's condo and we came home with far too many 'treasures.'

Empty wrapping paper tube turned into a chicken.  😊

 

We did our family Christmas on Bob's first day off, starting with puff pancake for breakfast. 

Tomato soup and grilled cheese for lunch.  (Tradition!)

And then presents!  Perrin was more interested in the dust buster. 

Emmy sent Miri and Cadence on a scavenger hunt to find their new mousy house. 

And then they had to bring all of the mice and their accoutrements out to 'move in.'

I had bought some cheap gingerbread kits at DG and some of them wanted to put them together. 

 

It worked out for all of the midwest Schlipfs to get together for Christmas on the 23rd.  There were nerdy games.

And watching of small children.

Christmas eve we all went to church... and then Perrin started dealing with an intestinal bug that required an outfit change.  Woot.  Bob took the girls to the big Koch Christmas that evening and I stayed home with Perrin, so there are no pictures.  😆

Christmas morning started with stockings, then I took the girls to church and the boys stayed home.   

We headed to the farm for lunch.

And Miri required an outfit change... *sigh*  We'll never know if it was the same thing Perrin had or antibiotic after affects. 

Then there were presents!

It was the year of the camera...

And Aunt Peggy must have gotten an embroidery machine, because she sent all the kids personalized tote bags. 😁

Mom opening up "Come Visit the Museum!" 

Poor Miri was ready to go home pretty early, so Bob took her home before supper.

We went to Bob's parents the next day. 

Perrin loved the train.

Hehe.  They built a present tunnel for the train. 

And then Perrin was a total grouch and I ended up taking him home early.  😜  Have kids they said, it'll make the holidays more fun, they said.  

Ok, so this light.  I love it... it was almost yellow with nicotine/dirt when I got it, but it's silver now that it's clean.  And I finally got 5 matching light shades for it.  I'm thinking it will be a great dining room light.  The only problem is, I've wired it three.stinking.times. and I need to do it again.  gah.  The first time the wires were too thick to fit through the upper pipe, so I bought different wire.  Second time the wires were just barely too thick to fit through the upper pipe.  So I bought different, smaller wire.  The third time everything fit and it works but I cut two of the wires just a smidge too short.  aljdklskjlgjlsd

Anyway, isn't she lovely?  I'm picturing a wreath on the ring at Christmas time... 😍

Since we've been done with Christmases, Bob got the intestinal bug, we got a new freezer and rearranged the storage room, Cadence had a friend over (who's very shy and didn't want her Mom to leave so I got to chat with an adult for a few hours.... so rare), and I got hit with some weird bug- I'm achy and tired and that's it(??). 

Further in and farther up.
Blessings.

December, part the first

So exciting when the Christmas presents start to arrive.... this was a project that deserves its own blog post.  😊

When Perrin plays with the Nativity set there is much growling and people falling over. 

It snowed! 

They played in it briefly. 

Perrin wasn't too sure at first, but then he didn't want to come inside.  He looks like he's ready to go winter camping in the Boundary Waters with Grandpa. 

Perrin needed a hair cut.  I attempted to give him a hair cut.

Poor boy, Bob said he looked Amish.  Haha.  So we called Aunt Mike and she was gracious enough to do a little fixing.

The three middles planned a ballet and were busily rehearsing...

and writing up programs...

Note the asterisks at the bottom. 😂  Unfortunately, their creative differences were insurmountable and the performance was cancelled.  Hehe. 

We went Christmas caroling and ended up at Linden and got to see Christina at work!  That was fun, and helped the girls not to be so uncomfortable... mostly.  :)

We were at the farm for Jack's birthday and I was trying to figure out what kind of sockets this fixture needs and thought this angle was kind of cool.  :)  (The cloth covering on the wires is disintegrating, so I'm going to attempt a rewire at some point.)

 

And because I'm becoming an antique lighting geek- I found the original catalog page for this fixture!  And mom casually mentioned that there were two more in the attic!  What?!  Haha.  So originally at the farm the sunroom had the three light fixture (still there), and the dining room and living room had matching five light fixtures.  So cool. 

 

 

I took the older three to the Hometown Christmas.  It was pretty fun. 

The lights were so pretty, and it wasn't super cold.  We didn't attempt to eat there, just did some crafts.

And met Olaf, and sang carols. 

Buster Brown busy 'helping.'

Aunt Shelly made my Dad a Wyss Farms shirt for Christmas, and we all got them too.

The girls fell in love with the Maileg mouse house and thought they neeeeeded it for Christmas, but it's expensive and there was a black Friday deal on a similar, unfinished house.  So even though I didn't need another project, I ended up decorating a cute little mousy house for them. 

Trees always look smaller at the lot...

Such good help.  :)

Perrin was asleep while we decorated- ooo, look! look! 

Just a little painting.

And coloring on top of sisters art works. 😜

We baked and frosted cookies.

There were even some cookies decorated a la uncle Jakey.

One of our Christmas books is a retelling of the Christmas story with matching Christmas hymns and the pictures are of kids practicing for and putting on a Christmas pageant.  So they set up their own scene. :)

Perrin behaved about as well as the 'baby Jesus' does in the book and it made me laugh. 

 

So the loggers finished all the logging!  It was a new crew and they worked 5x as fast as the previous crew.  I took a few of the kids out to check it out the next day. 

One perk is the nice paths that the equipment leaves- makes walking easier, even in the mud.

They had an order for sycamore wood, and asked if they could take two of ours... 😢

Quite a stack of logs. 

We managed to be ready for the Christmas program in time to take a picture.

Or something. 😂

For our anniversary, Bob asked Megan if she would be willing to do a custom painting for us, since she's a really good artist.

Four seasons, based on our backyard.  :)  They're so cool.  Now I just need to figure out where to hang them. 

 

The day after the church program was the Grade school program.  Perrin and Miri spent the whole time crawling all over the bleachers.

And Grandma brought stickers, so that helped.

I took the two littles with me to pick something up across the river so we went out for lunch.  Perrin spilled chocolate milk down his shirt twice.

And Miri needed to go the bathroom which is always stressful with a toddler in tow. 

Day three of programs/concerts was the Middle School band and chorus concert.  Perrin stayed home with Bob because there is no way he would be quiet enough the third night in a row.  :P  The girls could have been quieter too, but we had more stickers, and Julia was there also...

Three eye appointments- the only one who needed glasses got the exact same pair as last time, and the two who don't tried on every pair they could. 

Why yes, I did let Perrin eat a springerli by the Christmas tree, because, he was eating a whole springerli! 

We let the girls pick out gifts for their siblings at Dollar tree, which is always funny. 😋

Blessings.