Category: Family (Page 4 of 26)

There were many memorable moments on Christmas Day–enjoying time together with the Friesen side of the family–eating and laughing and opening gifts.  However, one of my favorites was bright and early before we opened gifts Tim read the Christmas story from the Bible to the kids.  He had Chloe write down all the characters (including animals) and then she assigned roles and we acted it out again.  It was fun.

Traditional Christmas Eve Jammies!

Jen’s crazy outfit! If you’ve ever seen the movie “Elf” you’ll understand her sweatshirt. 😉

Her onsie says it all!

We had a vast array of delicious appetizers–and this year I assembled a Veggie Christmas tree to help with all afternoon snacking…

The whole crew!

Yesterday we dedicated Madison at church.

We decided to have the kids come with us on stage to be a part of it more.  And actually, both of Josiah’s good friends ended up being dedicated at the same time, so they were all on stage together.  All three of the boys are the same age (born within a month of each other!).  I think it’s fun that he has friends his same age.  One of our other friends took this picture from the audience…

Maddie’s Dedication

And then of course, we tried to take a cute picture at home since we were all dressed up.  It took many (many!) attempts, but here’s my favorite.

And I just love this picture, even though it’s a little blurry.  It even looks like Maddie has her head bowed in prayer.

While on our Thanksgiving vacation we were able to make good use of the washer and dryers in the house.  However in the midst of loads of laundry (it rained most of the time we were there, so the kids got muddy anytime they went outside…) we discovered that the dryers were VERY full of dryer lint.  So full that it was downright dangerous.  And I use the word “we” loosely here.  In reality I think it was Bumpa who really figured it out and took the initiative to fix it.  😉

When it was time to take the dryer apart and vacuum out the lint Mae and Dalton were excited to be helpful and see what was going on.  It was adorable.

These are a few of my favorite Thanksgiving memories…

~ Giving hugs when we first arrived and looking down to find Mae hugging my leg without me knowing it.

~ Taking a walk with Mom to the beach and exclaiming over all the architectural details of the charming houses.

~ Opening our white elephant gifts and seeing Krista’s excitement over an old box.

~ “Dance Party.”  If you were there, you know.

~ Letting all the cousins come to our house and cuddle up on the couch to watch a movie.

~ Watching Audrey feed Maddie.

~ The picture falling on us as we were taking family pictures.

~ Mae sitting in my lap snuggling and trying to get my bangs to (unsuccessfully) tuck behind my ear.

~  Mae including herself in Nathan & Amy’s family picture.

~ Luke & Krista wearing matching ugly sweaters.

What about you?  Do you have a favorite memory from Thanksgiving?  I would love to hear it!

I looked down at my fingernails and noticed my glittery gold polish was almost gone.

And it made me smile.

It was a reminder.  A lovely reminder of being together with my family.  Just a matter of days ago we were all together laughing and talking.  Chloe, Audrey and I all sat in the noisy dining room around the 50’s style diner table and perused Krista’s delightful nail polish collection.  We took turns choosing our favorite colors and then painted our nails slowly.  We took time to let them dry before applying a second coat.  We stopped to admire our beautiful creations and took a picture to remember the moment.  Then we were onto our next activity.

It’s hard to only see my whole family once a year.  There’s so much I feel like I need to cram into one weekend.  I want to take pictures of everything, but then I worry that I’m missing out because all I’m doing is taking pictures.  And then, inevitably, something doesn’t go as planned.  I need to remember that I am still a Mom and wife and it’s asking a lot of my family to submerge themselves into a house of people they also only see once a year.  There will be a temper tantrum or two.  There will be missed naps.   I will get stressed and snap at Tim.  I spend weeks planning and plotting and anticipating and then I blink and it’s already done.  I leave wishing I had talked more to each person. Wishing I had hugged each kid again.  Wishing I had taken more pictures.

But today I looked down at those faded fingernails and smiled.  It’s a good thing to wish I could see them more, because that just proves that I love them.  In fact, I would be worried if I wasn’t sad at the end of the gatherings.

It’s taken me almost 5 days to get out of vacation mode.  I don’t know why the transition back to “normal” life is so hard for me, but I find that I don’t do semi-relaxed very well.  I’m programmed to be uber-productive/motivated or way-relaxed/lazy.  The inbetween (which I suppose would be semi-productive with a dash of relaxation) area is non-existent for me.

So, my eating and cleaning have been rough this week.  I’m happy to say that finally today (days later, ha!) I’m back to feeling like myself again.  The house is clean again, our suitcases are finally unpacked, laundry is caught back up, and I’ve stopped eating all the leftover treats from the weekend.

It didn’t help things that we decided to put up the Christmas tree upon arriving at home (literally) on Sunday night so that the kids could be a part of helping before they went to bed.  Then we found the leak in the ceiling which put a halt to finishing decorating the tree and putting up all of the Christmas decorations, which were now just strewn across the living room and dining room.  So, it took a day or two to get that all taken care of.

Chloe thought the tree looked done just like this.

I have all the memories of the weekend swimming around my head and I keep thinking I’ll post an amazing recap of everything… but here it’s Friday and I still haven’t written anything.  Maybe I’ll find some time this weekend.  🙂

Hope you’re all having a spectacular Friday!

We’re back, and boy does it feel good to be home.  We had a wonderful whirlwind Thanksgiving vacation in Indiana.  It was so much fun to see all of my family again.  I can’t believe how quickly 5 days zipped by… on the trip down there we swung into Waukesha to visit my Grandma Fritz.  She had never met Josiah or Maddie yet, so that was a special treat.  We didn’t have long to visit, but it was still really wonderful to be able to see her and my Aunt Dee.

We pulled into the rental house after supper on Wednesday night (everyone else had already arrived by then) and got settled.  I was pleased with the size and condition of the rental–you never REALLY know what you’re going to get when you find stuff online…  but it was very nice.  I’ll have to post more about the details of the rental later.  For now I’m exhausted.  We had the kids sleeping by us at the house which meant I woke up at EVERY sound they made…  plus it was a really hard bed.  Needless to say, I’m really excited to get to sleep in my comfy bed tonight!

I hope you all had wonderful Thanksgivings too!