Christmas

The nice thing about the ice storm was that it made for terrible skiing conditions and allowed for lots of quality family time.  The kids love having family around..... they talk about their grandparents, cousins, second cousins, great aunts and uncles all the time.  I't s a lot of work to keep up with the energy that these two gingers maintain, but Bumpa and Grandma did it like professional grandparents.  They were here for five days and the kids loved every minute of it.  This is how they spent a lot of their time:

toe nail painting by Grandma

Bedtime books and pigpile

Needlepoint lessons 

 When the weather was really cold and windy, we had a great excuse to go skating as a family.  Just about everyone hit the ice:

Cally skating on her own!

We also found time to romp around with cousin Will:

and snuggle with Aunt Nif on the couch:

To prepare for Santa's arrival, on Christmas Eve the kids made cookies for Santa with Grandma

And wrote a big card with lots of pictures:

And we woke up on Christmas morning to the most beautiful snow covered icy wonderland!

The kids had a ball opening gifts and playing with new toys.

We even made it out for an F.F.O (and it was maybe 8 degrees above zero)

We are thankful for having so much love in our house this week.  Christmas with children really is amazing.  I saw this  Facebook post recently:

I whole heartedly agree with that sentiment.  There really was a little magic in our house and I'm so glad we got to share it with our extended family!