I hope your Christmas season has been blessed! I hope it was a good time to build some positive memories with your family/friends, rejuvinate and of course ponder some about the real meaning of Christmas!
Our camera acted up yesterday and today we forgot it so no recent photos at this point. Tianna had her first ice skating experience on wednesday and held her feet pretty steadily; Kjersten had double bladed skates which boosted her confidence level as she could move without falling (well, usually). Tianna *almost* licked the ice on the ground but stopped her in time. Unfortunately I wasn't so fast a couple of days ago when she licked a metal post in our yard. I *tried* to keep her from pulling her tongue off and having Kjersten get Carl so he could get warm water or something, but she pulled it off anyway and had a bloody tongue and bruising for a couple of days. Hopefully she's learned her lesson!
Kjersten's choir sang yesterday for a christmas eve family service at church. I didn't mention to her that her Grandma and Grandpa Erickson were going, and you shoul've seen her when Grandpa went to the front to get a picture!!! She was grinning from ear to ear, jumping and dancing before, during and after the songs were done- only half singing and barily watching her choir director (mind you-- the not watchng her choir director was not limited to yesterdays performance it's just her level of enthusiasm was MUCH greater yesterday).
We went to my sister-in-law Kari's house for Christmas Eve and then today went ice skating and dinner at Carl's other sister Janel's house (unfortunately Janel, David (her husband) and daughter couldn't be there- see story below). Tianna and Nathaniel stayed with Grandma while the rest of us skated-- Tianna's been running a fever and has a bad cough but happy to play. It was Kjersten's and my first time skating on a frozen lake or even being on top of a frozen lake! After awhile she also tried snow-shoeing with her brand new bear claw shaped snow shoes. Our poor neice Ingrid (Janel's daughter) got whacked in the chin/lower lip with the blade of skate and had to be rushed to the ER with a pretty deep gash and lots of bleeding!!! She was getting stiches and I'm sure in a lot of pain, when the rest of us sat down for supper after 7 or 7:30 pm. We were back at Janel's house warming up when this happened, but I hear it was pretty bad (as you'd imagine if she was getting stiches)... Poor girl-- not quite the kind of memory you'd want to have for a Christmas day. Hopefully there won't be any noticeable scars when all the healing takes place.
Other brief news: Nathaniel has started to wave! He is enjoying eating all kinds of finger foods (I'm try to give him lots of high calorie foods because unlike my daughers were, his weights is at a very low percentile for his age) and crawling and cruising all over. He LOVES to trill his tongue, and I've heard him making clicking sounds and raspberries as well as your usual babble. He's such a pleasent little baby! Kjersten's been doing reading lessons in the "How to Teach Your child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" book and is on lesson 41 right now and thrilled with her new ability-- even figured out how to spell Ingrid's name all by herself (except omitting the n). Tianna's been very intersted in Kjersten's reading book, so we have taken up doing her own 'reading' lesson called 'squishy letters'. We have some squishy fabric letters my Aunt Pam sent a couple of years ago. So we took those out and have been using those to learn letters. She has quite a few down pretty well.

One of the nice things with Carl working for a park system is that we know when special events are going on! Carl called me this morning to say that there was a candy cane hunt going on this afternoon and we ought to get the kids to it. The kids had a lot of fun: hunting for candy canes stuck in the snow, eating s'mores, coloring pictures, doing a winter obstacle course (including climbing over small snowy hills, climbing through tunnels, jumping over things-- quite comical to observe since the snow was deep enough they couldn't exactly move quickly), and going on a carriage ride. There was a man dressed up like Santa Clause and Kjersten now insists that I am wrong-- Santa Claus really DOES exist and is alive and well! Sigh! I try to make sure I only teach my children about the true meaning of Christmas, but the world around us does a good job emphasizing other things. I know teaching about Santa isn't the worst thing in the world, but I just really don't want that to be the focus of the Christmas season.















We finally got a tree-- a big one would be too big to handle at this point and we're doing our primarily celebration at Kari's house, but the kids would've been disappointed without one. The nicest two things were the price tag: $4.64! :) (thrift store special that was 50% off the original price!) and it has fiberoptic lights imbeded into the tree, so no need to try to string lights and now burned out bulbs! :) Kjersten did all the decorating herself!

Not a whole lot of big news around here these days. I guess it really IS winter, after having two snow storms in 3 days, with about 8-9 inches of snow so far, reality is sinking in. We expect more snow tomorrow and later on in the week too! Maybe I'll see a 'real' Minnesota winter this year (people tell me I have not seen a real winter in my four years here). Nathaniel has 3 teeth and is not only crawling all over but is also crusing between pieces of furnature and around furnature and starting to get in to things. That's probably the biggest news around here! We had a low-key Thanksgiving with the rest of the Ericksons gone we decided to make it a day at home. Given the hectic pace of life, it was a nice thing to just stay home. For Christmas Carl's folks will be coming to Minnesota and all of the Ericksons will be around so that will be a bit more eventful. Kjersten will have a choir performance on Christmas Eve (as part of the church service). Nathaniel will be baby Jesus in the Thursday night church manger scene next week (which means Carl and I will be Joseph and Mary)-- that's the night we go to church since Carl works sunday mornings now. I guess that's the main news around here!