Making memories

The family photo as we were heading out the door to come home yesterday.

Every night Farfar (grandpa in Swedish) told parts of the Christmas story, and at the end of the week used the Nativity scene. He's a great story-teller, and the kids paid attention (for the most part) and were able to follow along night after night as the story unfolded.

And the attempt at getting all four kids to look in the same direction, and to stay on the piano bench, for a photo. Sierra and Annie are three months apart (Annie's 3) and Will is 5. Ethan is now 15 months. They had SO MUCH fun together -- peals of laughter coming from a bedroom, or downstairs, giggling at the table as they ate meals and snacks, etc. What a treat for Sierra to have playmates for an entire week, all day long!

A budding pianist??...he loved playing the piano this week, and was often very gentle, taking notes a couple at a time instead of banging away.

Singing Christmas carols via skype to Eleanor, Andre's youngest sister, who is currently with the Peace Corps in Ethiopia and couldn't join us.

Joie and I made sugar cookies with the kids one afternoon, and then the next morning I tackled the decorating with them (along with help from my in-laws!). The kids loved this of course!

Enjoying the Korean meal that Andre's sister and brother-in-law made (they are currently serving in South Korea, and had a gift given to them of airline tickets to fly home for Christmas this year).

Sierra and her cousin Annie, probably discussing whose turn it was to hold Moninga.

Andre and his brother-in-law relaxing with games on I pads while the kids napped.

The cousins playing with playdough one morning.

Sierra and Uncle Erik taking goofy photos on his laptop.

Ethan and his cousin Will with tractors.

Sierra and her Farmor and Moninga, the dog, who graciously put up with the kids dragging her around all week long (she's a tiny poodle)

We spent nine days with Andre's family in Nebraska over Christmas...the first part of our vacation was the trip down there. Andre's brother owns a snowplow business in Kansas and bought a plow truck on Craigslist in St. Paul and asked us to drive it down to their folks. So that we could drive together instead of leaving one of us with the kids for 7+ hours in the car, Andre rented a trailer to haul our Explorer on, and we all piled into the pick-up truck (which is a "work" truck--dirty, smelly, noisy). The kids were completely happy, on an adventure. We must have looked funny driving down the highway, in the beat-up truck that had a huge plow in the back, pulling the nice vehicle that had the dogs in the back of it. But we made it in one piece with no problems. We had a fabulous week of yummy food, lots of conversation and laughter (a few tears), and relaxing.