Christmas!

We had a wonderful week over Christmas in PA with Philip's parents. The boys had a blast with their Grandpa and Grandma, who as always had fun activities planned. One of the highlights was a trip to the Hershey Chocolate Factory. The boys had visited in May when Andrew was born and Caleb insisted that I had to visit. :) So, we took the tour, had some dinner and then drove through the Hershey Christmas Lights display. Caleb declared it was the "best day" of his life, which is quite a compliment coming from Caleb! The tour isn't of the real factory anymore and I would describe as aimed at ADD children rather than people who are interested in learning about the chocolate making process (like me!), so that was a little disappointing, but it was still fun to see it through the boys' eyes.

Here we are at Hershey. Behind us is a store with LOTS of chocolate!!

The boys also had fun making and decorating bread dough ornaments with Grandpa.

All week we talked about the Advent calendar, lit candles for the Advent wreath and did the Family Life "What God Wants for Christmas" nativity, which includes a series of "gifts" for the kids open...each of which is a character from the Christmas story. Then on the last day, Christmas Eve, the box holds a mirror to show the child that what God wants for Christmas is US! It was so neat to see him get all excited about the boxes and understanding how much God wanted his heart. He actually prayed to ask Jesus into his heart that day. He is pretty young, but does have a good understanding of the Gospel and we are definitely following it up with appropriate conversations to make sure it "sticks". :)
The weather cooperated so that we were able to go out for a nice Christmas Eve service at a local church. In fact, all the BAD weather that was supposed to happen never did. The boys were disappointed by the lack of snow, but it sure makes driving easier!

Christmas morning was fun. Of course we started the day with Swedish Pancakes and then a reading of the Christmas story. The boys got some great new books and games. Caleb has particularly enjoyed Connect 4 and some cool connectors called Magnaformers. And of course Joshua's very favorite gifts were the VeggieTales videos and Thomas the Train drawbridge.

I, of course, had fun doing some baking while there were extra mouths to consume. Here I was caught red-antlered in the kitchen while whipping up some pie crust or something. :)


Myrna's brother and some of his family came down for the last day of our visit. We enjoyed meeting Rachel and her new fiancee, Steve, and everyone had fun playing with the boys.

And since no post is truly complete without a super cute baby picture, here you go!