Christmas Time was Here

On Christmas morning, the boys didn't actually wake up until around 8am (which is really good for them). We had breakfast together (Anders helped me make Swedish oven pancakes), lit the last candle on the Advent wreath and read the Christmas story together. Then we opened presents (we had thought about going to a church service that morning to remind the boys what Christmas is about, be we only found one that had a Christmas morning service, and it didn't fit into the morning schedule well).

So instead we ran over to the care centre by the hospital down the road from us where the husband of one of the ladies from church lives. They don't get a lot of kids there, so the boys always brighten the faces of the residents.

Then we got on the road, crossed the border (there was no wait at the border) and drove down to Monroe, Washington. We spent the rest of Christmas Day with the Wells family. Dave was my pastor when I was in Jr. & Sr. High. It was kind of a connection to home for us (though Beth and the boys didn't really know the family--but it felt like family for us).


We spent Boxing Day (which is the day after Christmas) going down to Seattle. We stopped at a toy train store on the way and then went out to lunch at the waterfront in Seattle. It was cold, but we spent a little time walking along Pier 70 and taking a quick stroll through the new sculpture park. We stayed one more night before returning home and returned to a lightly falling snow (the 5th snowfall of December here--the news says that's rare, so we'll believe them for now).