December 24-31

Merry Christmas!

We celebrated Christmas twice since St. Stephen's is currently without a priest.  The bishop gave his blessing for the Christmas liturgy to be celebrated on Sunday with the substitute priest.  We had the service, the festal potluck, and a relaxing evening of dinner and games with the Creightons.  Then on Monday we went to Catholic Mass, opened our first day's presents, and made a Christmas duck (!) for dinner.

Jacob and Jillian drove in on Monday afternoon.  This made Bryan especially happy because Mom, Dad, and James arrived late Monday night early Tuesday morning and Jacob was willing to go pick them up from the airport.  Jacque and Will came in Tuesday afternoon.  The Bossards were unfortunately detained due to sickness, but we did get to see them on Saturday.  Bishop PAUL decided to visit for the church feast day, so we had liturgy with the bishop on Wednesday morning.  Jacob and Jillian left Wednesday afternoon to go help Joe propose to Angelina on Thursday evening, after which they all came back to our house.  On Friday the Eichers and Aufdemberges came to visit and after the kids went to bed we did the secret Santa gift exchange (Justine and Joseph video called in).  Jacob left Friday night for work related reasons.  The Bossards, now free from sickness, arrived Saturday afternoon just in time to say hello-goodbye to dad before Bryan took him to the airport.  The Smiths left a few hours later.  We still have the Bossards through tomorrow, Joe, Angelina, and Jillian through Monday, and Mom and James until Friday.

We played a lot of games and ate a lot of Christmas cookies this week.  Peppermint ice cream was consumed with homemade hot fudge.  Bryan has a new video game called Super Mario Maker and he designed levels for people to play.  We played a few new board games and convinced James to play Splendor, Carcassone, and Forbidden Island with Olivia.  Jacque and Will got the girls a new game, Hullabaloo, that they enjoy playing by themselves.  The week was quite enjoyable.  :)

Matthias is in 12 month clothes, has a second tooth, and grabs his toes.  My siblings were quite impressed with his baby planks as well as with his "superman," which I'm guessing is a stretch where you put all your limbs in the air while you balance on your stomach.

Olivia thinks her godmother is a fairy godmother.  After receiving a gift from her godmother, she wanted to know if she also had a fairy godfather.  She does.  Then she wondered how else her fairy godmother might help her in her life.  Justine seemed pleased with this designation.

Pictures:

Happy baby in a flying saucer:

Baby planks:

Matthias and Opa look uninspired:

A quillow is good for keeping heads warm.  That's me:

Matthias and his blanket square:

Kaitlyn shows off her new earrings: