We wish everyone a wonderful Christmas Day tomorrow! We have our third church service in 24 hours and then I plan to cook a big meal and take some of it to a couple in need from church.

We opened up our presents this afternoon. Thank you so much for your nice gifts. They were all wonderful. Our house is covered from top to bottom in wrapping paper and cardboard boxes. I guess the burn barrel will have some work to do tomorrow as well. Once church is over tomorrow we are on VACATION! YIPPEE! Well, I guess Matt has to do one visitation, but that won’t take long.

The family photo album has been updated from Dec 9th – today. A few highlights…
-Yes Christian’s favorite color is still red… Can you tell?
-The adorable frog outfits were made by Nana
-The school pictures are from the night of the boys Christmas program at school. No, Christian does not have that many kids in his class – that is three classes combined, and no it was not that warm out…. They did a cruise themed program so they were supposed to dress in summery clothes.
-Ryan went from a year of hating jammies, to BEGGING for footed sleeper jammies. I looked everywhere for some in his size and finally found some at Land’s End (or was it L.L. Bean… I get those two mixed up). Anyway… He was so excited!

Dane went to the Dr. on Friday and he said he really should be walking soon. So we are supposed to encourage him a bit more. He had another X-ray and everything is all healed, so he just has to re-learn and regain his courage to walk. Hopefully soon, my arms are getting tired! He has another appointment in a month that we can cancel if he is walking by then.

The Christmas services have gone well. The kids program/service was tonight and it was wonderful. They counted 233 in attendance, but guessed there were probably more they might have missed as they just counted from the back and it was hard to see little heads. Needless to say, a good turn out for a little rural country church! We’ll see how many show up in the morning.

The best part of all? Our prayers were answered and no one else caught Christian’s flu bug! I am soooo glad! We all have little colds, but that is so much better than the tummy bug he had. Now I’m hoping we’ll stay healthy after Christmas so we can have some fun on our vacation.

All right, I’m off to lay out clothes for the kids tomorrow and jump into bed. I guess I better make sure Santa remembers to visit too!

Merry Christmas!

Just a quick update… Christian ended up having the flu. I think he is finally starting to feel better tonight. So I was up with him all night Tuesday. He was very sad to miss his Christmas party at school on Wednesday. Then Wednesday Night I was up with Dane who came down with croup. Apparently he is susceptible to that and strep throat as he seems to catch those two things every year. He is currently in his bed, so I am jumping into mine for some much needed rest and praying that no one else gets sick. Please do keep Matt in your prayers as he has three services to make it through – Sunday morning, evening and Monday morning. He doesn’t have time to get sick. He says pastor’s don’t get sick for Christmas. Let’s hope not!

On a happier note… If you want a good laugh head here: http://www.elfyourself.com/?userid=b31117a0a96cd33643c45b7G06122118
I turned myself into an elf to bring you some holiday cheer. Make sure your speakers are on.

Oh and for those of you who are worried about us being all alone for Christmas… We are being well taken care of. I think we have had about 200 cookies delivered (most landed in the freezer and we’ll be set for awhile!), 50 pounds of meat (I guess that is the midwest gift or something), many gifts for under the tree, gift certificates, cash, free babysitting and cards galore. Everyone is taking care of us – it is overwhelming the amount of gifts and love we have received. So we will miss you, but don’t worry about us feeling neglected!

All right, good night!
C-

‘Tis the Season for Busy Schedules and sick kids…between Christmas Programs, Christmas Parties and every day life we are keeping plenty busy! Both Ryan and Christian have terrible coughs. Ryan was up half the night coughing – even after cough medicine and cough drops. Christian coughed so hard this morning he threw up. So we’re just taking it easy today. I tried to keep Ryan home from school, but he really wanted to go and he wasn’t coughing this morning (go figure)… So off he went. Matt had to step in and help while I cleaned up Christian’s mess. Tomorrow is their last day, then they have off until Jan 3rd – so two full weeks. That will be nice!

Dane is healthy… He was sick a couple weeks ago, but it was very short lived. He is still not walking, but he’s riding his little push car thing around the house now. It’s funny because it is like we are going through the exact same stages he went through a year ago. He crawls, rides around his bike and CLIMBS…. which I’m not real excited about obviously. Hopefully he will walk soon. He actually stood flat footed yesterday(holding on to something). He had been standing on his tip toes on the right leg until then. He goes back in on Friday for a check-up.

We had a death in the family a couple days ago. I went to pick the boys up from school and when we pulled back up at home – right in front of our house was Panga (One of the kittens) obviously run over… I think she might have been somewhere on my car and I ran her over. The kids were pretty good with it – not too sad thankfully. They went out and looked at her while Matt scooped her up. Then he put her in the burn barrel. The next day when we went out to burn garbage (and Panga) All the other cats gathered around and the kitties were rubbing up against the mommy in comfort. They obviously knew. So now we are down to mommy and 4 babies. One of the others just disappeared awhile back. That’s how it goes with country cats we’re told. Spring is coming and I’m sure we’ll have more…The good news is our mice population has been down.

The neighbors gave us their go-cart a couple weeks ago. It needed some help, but Matt replaced the tires, padded the hard metal seat, had a friend weld the frame, and made a few other adjustments and it is ready to roll. We were going to give it to the boys for Christmas, but Ryan found it out in the shop, so they have been helping daddy work on it and now have ridden it a couple times. Lots of fun!

Well, I need to go grab Dane out of the tub he is going to be a prune. I can hear him playing in there happy as can be. I will try to update the album a bit later today. I know Nana is waiting for those pictures of the adorable outfits she made the boys.

C-

“God put our mouths on the bottom so when you drink water doesn’t get in your eyes.”
Christian Steendahl
4 years old

I am in the process of updating the photo gallery – click on the family album link at the top.

I’m tired and ready to bed, but I wanted to do a quick update since I haven’t for a bit. So here are some highlights.

Last Thursday Ryan had a quick flu bug that the rest of us didn’t catch. YEA!

Dane ended up with antibiotics on Monday. He was pulling on his ear so we took him in. He didn’t have an ear infection, but his throat was really red so they gave him medicine.

Dane got his cast off on Friday- the 8th. I am soooooo glad! That was a long 5 weeks. He is crawling around on his hands and knees still and he pulls himself up on stuff. He should be walking again in about a week and may limp up to 2 months. We came home and threw him in the bath and he screamed the entire time. The lady had cut him in a few places taking off the cast, so I think those hurt. : (

The picture gallery is up and running. (see the top link or go to www.pastorsfamily.com ) We’ll get some more pictures up in there hopefully tomorrow.

We didn’t get our big snow storm – it turned out to be mostly rain with a trace of snow. We had some very cold days and now it is supopsed to be 40’s for awhile.

All the Christmas presents have been mailed. I still need to do some cards.

Matt is busy with both Wed & Sunday services until Christmas. We’re all looking forward to Christmas break. Matt has off the 26th – 2nd.

We don’t have a tree yet

All right, I’m going to bed.

I ventured out Friday Morning for “Black Friday” shopping. I left at 4:30 a.m. and got home around 3:00 p.m. It was so nice to get out of the house all by myself. My cell phone battery was dead so Matt couldn’t even call (although I heard about tha when I got home…) It was nice to just be me. I did stand in line at Best Buy for an hour and 45 minutes to get our new camera. I was thankful when I got to the front they had one in stock. That was the line to just find out if they had one left! (they did let me pay there as well. PHEW!) Most lines were LONG but I got about 1/2 my Christmas shopping done, and then I finished the rest online on Saturday.

The weather here has been incredible – mid 60’s all week. I have been shoving the kids outside to enjoy the last few moments of fall. It is supposed to get cold again on Friday. I hear in Marysville/Lake Stevens they had 5 inches of snow and schools have been closed for 2 days. I guess we can be glad we aren’t there anymore, although I am sure the kids would enjoy the snow at this point. I am sure we’ll get our snow day at some point this winter.

We had a nice time at the Thanksgiving dinner. We just brought the creeper thing we have set up at home for Dane. Of course I had my old camera still at that point, so not all the pictures turned out. Here is one.

Grandma, here is Dane enjoying the package you sent. Notice the clock in the background… 11:50 and still in bed… We were lazy that day.

Dane is doing pretty good. He can stand up now and crawls pretty good – although he doesn’t seem to like crawling all that much. He still would prefer to be held most of the time. He is sleeping through the night again, so that is a huge plus in my book! Yesterday he was a bit confused. He woke up from his nap and thought it was morning. He was asking for oatmeal for breakfast. LOL Then at night, he thought it was nap time. He slept about an hour and a half and then he woke up and was wide awake for 2 1/2 hours or so. We just left him in his crib with the door open and he was talking away. He finally did go back to sleep thankfully. I think I fell asleep before he did…

We are working on a new link at the top – see that? Family Photo Album. Maybe it will even work by the time you read this, but it isn’t working quite yet. However that will allow us to share more pictures as it links to a site with a lot more file space. With the new camera we will have a boat load for awhile I think. Here a few to wet your appetite until the new area is up and running.

Now that we can hit the picture button and it will actually take an imeediate picture instead of 15 seconds later, and the pictures are clear…. It is a lot more fun to snap photos. I am sure they will get better as we learn more about the camera too.

I hope you are well! There is a big flu bug going around our town, but so far we haven’t caught it yet. I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

C-

I hope everyone has a great day tomorrow! We are going to enjoy church at 9:30 and then a quiet day at home. Then at 5:45 we are heading to the VanHoveln Thanksgiving Dinner. (We”re adopted family members) It is an extended family of over 100 (many who go to our church) held at the gym at the boy’s school. Should be fun. We haven’t quite figured out what we’ll do with Dane, but I’m sure we’ll figure out something. Saves me having to prepare a big meal anyway! Although we did buy a turkey since they are always on sale this time of year.

I am still trying to decide if I want to leave by 4:00 to be at Best Buy at 5:00 Friday morning. There is a digital camera I have my eye on since ours is dying a slow death. (Hence, the lack of pictures…) However, I might be kinda grumpy if I did that and didn’t actually get one… Although, I haven’t really left the house for three weeks, so it might actually be worth it. Clara, I’ll miss our traditional shopping trip this year!

We had Christian’s conference on Monday. It sounds like he is doing great. Seems to be on track with his learning and is well behaved. So that is good! Ryan had a big Social Studies test yesterday. He ended up with 80%. I was surprised how much they expect him to know. He had to color in our state on a blank map, then color the states the touch Canada and the states that touch Mexico. Nothing was labeled. Then there were a bunch of other questions about citizen, law, state and government.

Dane has slept the last few nights pretty well. We finally cracked down with him a bit (lack of sleep made our patience of waking up at 3:00 and staying up till 7:30 run out quickly). He is standing up periodically now. (while holding onto something of course) Every morning when we go to get him out of his crib he is standing. Two more weeks until we go in again and hopefully get the cast off!

Well, I’m off to watch a DVD. This training I am doing has sent me 27 DVD’s so far and I’ve only made it 1/3 of the way through one…. Gotta get cracking!

C-