Five Happy Campers: Christmas . .

Whoa, it's been a LONG time since I updated this. And I have no idea how that much time went by so quickly. During the last half of December, we were consumed with Christmas programs, parties and preparations, and then after Christmas, the massive clean-up and recovery. :) It really struck us this year the amount of time (WEEKS) and effort goes into the celebration of one singular day. By December 27th, we found ourselves completely bone-weary exhausted and resolved to do a major overhaul of Christmas in 2011. It will be interesting to see what we come up with . . .

In the meantime, here are some of our memories from Christmas 2010:

(I love this pic of my dad. Shortly before Christmas, we were at my brother's and he fixed my very masculine, hunting/fishing/outdoors loving dad a PINK cosmo. And he drank it. :) )

Noah's piano recital. He's come so far this year. One day I heard him playing Christmas songs, went and asked him where he found Christmas music, and found he didn't have any - he was able to re-create them from his head.

This is his amazing instructor.

Our tree. We all LOVED it. It's real, and it's "flocked" - meaning sprayed with a white foam material to look like snow. It was a trick to decorate, however.

My new favorite ornament. Found it this year - was over the moon.

Noah's school program - he's in the top row, in the red.

Jack's school program - he's basically in the center of the picture, in red.

A fun night we had with our friends at Storybook Island - they decorate the whole park with millions of lights - it's just beautiful.

(That's a plaster Santa - not the real deal).

Christmas Eve was a great day for us. The four of us went to our favorite place for lunch (Qdoba), spent an hour at Border's spending gift certificates, had coffee at Starbucks and then headed home for a game of Battleship before church.

The boys vs. mom and dad. They won.

All ready for church -

Had a few moments of goofiness . . . .

I love this picture.

Christmas morning, the boys found enormous stockings left by Santa. (which they don't buy into anymore).

Opening gifts . . . .

Is that a look of happiness, or what?

I created "scrapbooks" for each of the kids on Snapfish - each book contained approx. 300 photos from 2010, and they LOVED them. Jack said it was his favorite gift. It was #2 on Noah's list. So many of these pictures they never see, because they don't sit down at the computer and look at them. So it was fun to re-live the year with them.

Later on, we headed up to my mom and dad's in Spearfish. Jack and Noah read the Christmas story from my dad's giant antique bible.

The 26th, the whole family went bowling. I didn't even bowl because I wanted to capture all the fun (and I had a neck injury). It was the first time all the Horak cousins had bowled together. And it was my nephew Aaron's first time EVER, and oh the cuteness!!!