Christmas in Midland

Due to the close proximity of Viola's arrival, we celebrated Christmas with both sides of the family at our house this year. The Motz family arrived Monday to spend that night and the next. On Monday night we toured the Grasslands neighborhood to enjoy all the lights. Afterwards we watched A Christmas Story. "Not a finger!" quickly took its place among all our other traditional family sayings. On Tuesday evening we opened our gifts. Among many other things, the kids opened Sleeping Beauty and Prince Phillip dolls.
After the Motz departure on Wednesday morning, the Griffin family arrived that evening to spend two nights with us. On Christmas Eve, Jan and I spent most of the day taking turns in the kitchen as we prepared the holiday meal. Thanks to her help it went very smoothly and the food turned out great. I even made monkey bread for the first time. That night the kids opened a couple of gifts including pajamas and a laughing puppy dog from Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Aggie. You can see from the picture below that they aren't quite sure what to make of it. After the kids went to bed, we watched It's a Wonderful Life.
On Christmas morning we slept in until about 8:00. The kids looked at their stockings as soon as they got up, and I made pancakes. After breakfast, the real extravaganza began. The kids got more stuff than the law allows! And we got some great stuff as well. Thank you to both families for a special time and for all the thoughtful gifts.

We'll Be Eating Christmas Cookies for a Fortnight

Christmas cookie night is now officially an annual family tradition at the Griffin house. As of tonight, we've churned out three expertly decorated batches of cookies in as many years. Morgan is now old enough to remember the last cookie baking extravaganza and, in fitting fashion, informed us every time we deviated from the previous year's proceedings. I, of course, was there to enjoy the fun but someone has to operate the camera. (As a side note, we just finished reading the complete works of Beatrix Potter for the second time. Any perceived reflection of her writing style in this post is purely coincidental.)

Morgan's 4th Birthday Bash

For Morgan's 4th birthday party we did a Prince Phillip theme. Prince Phillip cakes aren't available at supermarkets so I labored over a shield cake for 2+ hours the night before. We had at least a dozen kids present. Morgan had a great time with all of his friends. Thanks to my mom and mom-in-law for all their help!

Decortaing the Tree & First Snow

The week since our Thanksgiving trip has absolutely flown! In addition to all the unpacking and preparations for Morgan's party, we set up the tree and decorated it in the Motz family tradition (that is, with Richard Clayderman playing in the background). On Friday of the week we also got our first -and possibly only- snow of the season. The kids discovered it before they were even out of their beds in the morning and we headed out for awhile after breakfast. You may not be able to tell in the photos, but they are following another Motz tradition by wearing Wal-mart sacks over their shoes.


















Both kids spent a lot of time eating the snow.