Christmas part II

Every year we are home for Christmas. It is just us and we don't usually have a lot planned. This year we were invited to our Pastor's house for fellowship on Christmas Eve. We were the only guests but had a fun time playing games and munching on goodies. Christmas day was pretty much no fuss. I wanted something relatively simple for the main meal and was going to get a beef tenderloin until I saw how expensive they are. We went with a pork roast instead. I put that in the crock pot with a shallots & mushroom sauce, a first time using shallots. Then we just had mashed potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce and rolls. We put together a gingerbread village and played outside in the snow. Later in the evening I rolled and cut out cookies while the kids played. Matthew helped a little but he likes decorating more than cutting them out. After church on Sunday we just took it easy and cleaned up a little bit. After nap time I made the icing for the cookies and we decorated a few. Matthew and Brian took some over to the neighbor and Matthew thanked him for clearing the snow from our path so we could walk :-) All in all we had a nice time. Emily's favorite gift was her new doll that makes noise when you feed it. She's such a little mommy with her dolls and stuffed animals! Matthew even likes her doll and tells Emily what to do when her baby is crying.

Something else we learned this past weekend is that Emily isn't quite afraid of snow anymore. Her first couple times out she was more timid with the uneven walking surface and she tended to get upset when she fell over. On Christmas day she was trying to climb the snow pile and when we'd take her to the top of the hill, she liked to scoot down it all by herself. She also enjoyed sledding and didn't mind too much when she fell over and got snow in her face. She actually got upset when she had to get out of the sled to take it back to the top. I think she's going to really enjoy the white stuff as she gets bigger and stronger! This is Matthew's first winter of not asking to come in before we tell him it's time. He and his daddy sure have fun and he's glad we found new gloves that stay on his hands the entire time. Thanks Auntie Denise for introducing us to them, we haven't needed to adjust the gloves a single time!