Soren's Blessing

Since the last post which was midweek, we have done a lot and very little. Getting back from the trip resulted in having a couple down days, but it also had some really great things happen. It was also SOOO cold here, and we had a lot of snow. Our car said it was in the teens today on our way to church, and one day when it was 29 degrees, I thought it felt warm! Yikes. Needless to say, we didn't really get any outdoor activities in this week once we returned to Michigan.

Today was a special day because Ryan blessed Soren at church. It was a really great day. My parents came up for the weekend and Kris and Linda came to our church meeting today to attend the blessing. The above pictures are some of us after the blessing with Soren in his outfit from my Aunt Patty and Uncle Dennis in Italy. As you can tell by the absence of Keira from some of the photos, she was being a two year old and not cooperating for the photos. She was too interested in rushing off to nursery since she hadn't been for the last couple weeks due to Stake Conference and our trip. After the blessing, we went over to Kris and Linda's for a fabulous meal. Since they will be in Germany this Christmas visiting Greg and Ellyn and family, they broke out the Christmas dinner pieces and we ate in the dining room to make it more festive for the season. After we got home, we were able to watch most of the Christmas Devotional on the computer due to technical difficulties (we have had a lot of those this week!).

My parents made the drive up on Saturday despite the weather causing some rather difficult driving conditions in Michigan. We spent the afternoon shopping and had a great dinner at Claddagh. It was amazing, we have no pictures from Saturday. I don't know that happened with both my mom and I around!

I attended a really cool Primary Activity Day on Saturday. We planned a "Super Saturday" for the children to make crafts to give as gifts and even had a gift wrapping station so that they could go home with a bag full of wrapped gifts. I will not elaborate on them because I think some of my readers will be receiving these gifts at Christmas presents. I hope you like them! The children were very well behaved and seemed very interested in what they were doing. I would totally recommend doing this again, although I would not wait until the last minute to kit my craft like I did. I spent good amount of time on Friday evening kitting beads and pipe cleaners into plastic bags. With my IE background, I was getting frustrated with my process flow because I wanted to save the longest step for last, because it was a bit of preassembly and I considered not doing it beforehand and having the children do that part themselves. This resulted in triple handling of the bags. Shameful! So much waste! It was a good thing the whole thing only took a few hours overall and I was not setting up a business and was only wasting my own time and not someone else's.

I also took Keira to the library for the music time on Friday, and we stopped at the mall to go to the playarea on the way home. It was just too cold for anything outside!

We also took several days this week to decorate our tree. Initially, Keira was helping, but she had a really hard time with the concept of putting on an ornament and then leaving it there. I had felt bad about being frustrated with her because I thought it should be a family activity until I realized that she was driving Ryan crazy too. We thought it might be better if we waited until next year to let her help us do it.
Keira helping to fluff out the tree.

Here is a shot of our tree completed.
I love our pyramid. It is also a favorite of Keira's. We went through so many candles last year. She spent some time playing with Kris and Linda's today, looking rather like Randy Quaid from Christmas Vacation, although she was able to put it back together.

Our Nativity, although Keira does mess with it a bit, rearranging our stable animals.

Keira's and Soren's Nativity. Hopefully we won't lose track of any pieces this year. We only misplaced the "food" from the cart last year. She has already been taking baby Jesus all over the house.

To elaborate on our computer difficulties, our router went out this week, but gradually. It first started that our computer wouldn't work through it, so we could use either the VOIP phone or the internet, but not both at the same time because we needed to connect the computer directly to our modem and bypass the router. It was a bit old school style like when I had dial up back when the internet was new. Fortunately, most people have our cell phone numbers and we forwarded our home phone calls to my cell. The bad thing was that in the end, we had to replace the router and it was not as inexpensive as it was when we started the service because we were not eligible for the rebates as new customers. At least we are back online now, though.

Up for next week, we will just be furthering our Christmas preparations and attending Ryan's work Christmas party at Thunderbowl. Maybe I can find some clear roads/sidewalks to get out and prove how hardcore I am to run.