So it’s 2 days after Christmas, but the partying isn’t over just yet! Today Kase turns 7 and for his big day he chose to take the whole family to Leavenworth for a day of sledding!
The funnest part of tubing in Leavenworth is the easy ride to the top. No hiking, hauling, or climbing your way to the top of the mountain.
Here’s everyone else screaming down the hill.
After sledding we finished up with presents and lunch at Red Robin
Happy Birthday Kase!
Christmas morning with the kids was a blast! It always is. Watching kids enjoy gift exchanges has to be one of the worlds best experiences. Especially when the kids are enjoying and appreciating what has been given and received.
This is one of Hudson’s gifts, but ended up being a huge hit with all of the kids. The video below explains it all. Can you imagine having a ball you could stand up in and roll around it. LIFE SIZE!! How cool.
After our own family festivities were done we spent the rest of the afternoon with the Roses.
Stockings have always been a really big thing in my family, probably everyone’s favorite part of Christmas. Last year we each received our “final stocking” from our childhood Santa. It was super fun to receive that last year…..BUT…..it is a little sad knowing that that tradition is over :(
This year Leslie wanted to put a stocking together for my parents, so we all contributed towards one huge stocking for the both of them. It was a fun surprise for them. 
After presents and dinner the rest of the day was spent playing with cousins. Can life get any better for a kid. What a killer day!
So the kids set up a video camera in the living room tonight before they went to bed, trying to catch Santa. And guess what… They actually did! Here’s the video for proof. The first half of the video is just a silent dark living room but about 20 minutes after midnight Santa finally appears. I’ve only attached the last couple minutes with Santa. (Sorry about the ugly half lit Christmas Tree. Our fuse just went out a couple of nights ago. I was hoping Santa would take care of it while he was here. He must have been too busy tonight)
BUSTED!!! So the kids totally got caught. Santa wrote them a letter saying not to try that again or they may find themselves on the naughty list but he was letting it slide for this year. I don’t think the older kids are to worried though because I’ve already heard them talking about putting some kind of video camera on the roof to capture Santa’s sleigh and flying reindeer next year. :)
This morning was Christmas Eve brunch with Grandma Rose. I love this tradition and look forward to it every year. This year I wanted to put together something special for grandma as a Christmas gift instead of my normal store bought gift.
Whenever we come over to grandma’s house she asks us girl’s to sing something or sit down and play the piano for her. We never have anything practiced or prepared so we try our best to plunk away at a song but this year I thought it would be a fun surprise if we put on a little concert for her. So I contacted all of my cousins and sisters to see if they were in, and then sent out sheet music for everyone to start practicing. We all got together last night to have a final run through and it sounded great. After practicing we even were able to sneak away for a late dinner together, which was a ton of fun. (Especially the guy who was licking the restaurant window right outside of our booth ;) Good times!
After breakfast was over and cleaned up we sat Grandma down for her big surprise. We all sang her a song called “Baby in a Manger”, we did parts and everything, it sounded really pretty and made grandma cry. Then a duet was preformed, a couple of piano solos, and finally my grandma’s favorite and most requested Christmas song “Star of the East”.
I video taped us singing but I’m not sure how many of them wanted to be made famous on my blog today so I’m just putting my grandma’s reaction to our songs, which is my favorite part anyway.
We love you Grandma!
Every year the Ostler side of the family puts together a Nativity video to watch together on Christmas Eve. In years past we have had the kids dress up and act out the Story of Christ’s birth while grandpa Ostler narrates. This year we decided to do something a little different; use the kids as the Narrators and the adults as the actors. Kind of like the kid history videos you can find on youtube.
So first step was to interview all of the grandkids, ages 2-11, to see how much of the nativity story they knew. My brother in law, David is heading up this project and will be the mastermind behind cropping and snipping all of the kids interviews together to make one awesome story told by the grandkids. Dan and I interviewed all of our kids tonight so we could turn our videos into David to get started. They all did really good retelling the story and most of them said something funny that will be so cute to use in the video. But the award for “biggest ham” and “kids saying the darndest things” goes to our 3yr old, Hudson. Here are a few of my favorite lines that I hope will make it into the final edit. (I left Dan and I talking on the video just so you would know what questions he was responding to, but in the final video it will be just the kids talking.)
(My favorite 4mins out of 56mins of interviewing)
Can’t wait to see the final product on Christmas Eve. It should be AWESOME! Thanks for all your hard work David.
Just one song from Hailey’s Christmas Program tonight. She’s in the front row with a white shirt and red elf hat on.
I put together a few craft exchanges with some friends this week. Due to the large number of people who wanted to take part, I ended up splitting the group up and taking part in 2 different groups, each with 10 or so people. This time, instead of exchanging all “Christmas themed” crafts, we chose to do a combination of all of the holidays. Everyone made a craft, (times 10) and brought them to exchange with each other. This allowed everyone to go home with 10 new decorations after the exchange. It felt like Christmas with all of the wrapped gifts/crafts under the tree.
Everyone also brought their favorite appetizer to share. Yummy!
Everyone made really cute stuff, I especially loved Kathy’s Valentine Advent calendar. I was assigned the holiday “Halloween” and made blocks that said Wicked, it’s gonna be a while until everyone can actually use them.
Less than a week later we did it all over again with a different group of friends. For this one I made chalkboards that said I’m thankful for… to be used during Thanksgiving. Once again, I went home with a ton of really cute stuff.
Hudson is learning this song for his preschool Christmas program and loves to sing it like 5 times a day.
