"Do you like my hat now?"

Isaac got an inside out stressball for Christmas. It is very entertaining.

6 hours

That's how long it took Nate to finish his computer model to make a soduko solver. But he had a fun time figuring it out. At least it was a challenge for a little while. If you'd like the file email me and I'll send it to you.

"This proves that I'm a geek."

So I got Nate this Soduko electronic handheld game for Christmas. He decided that because the electronic game gave too many hints to solve the puzzle (and to do it with the paper version would pose problems of not knowing you were getting it wrong until the end)

See here to find info on the game

Nate decided to build a computer program in Excel to solve the game. He has been working on this all afternoon. And he says to me, "This proves that I'm a geek." Of course I knew that when I married him. But it came from his mouth...

Joy to the World!

Toby's favorite gift was the Lego's. He spent all day building and playing.

Aspen's favorite gift was the Magic of Pegasus Pony. She spent all morning doing horse hair!
Isaac finally got the giant box of Tinker toys and spent the morning building with Nate and Jake.Hazel got a little egg shaker. Perfect size for baby hands and it makes noise. Other favorite was the paper, of course.
All the kids liked Hazel's presents. Aspen and Isaac were trying to get bitten by the roboraptor. They were a little disappointed that the bite didn't actually hurt!! Silly kids.

Hazel really enjoyed her first Christmas morning. When she gets excited she wiggles all over.

'Twas the night before Christmas

We had Jake and Amy's family and Mike and Mindy's family with us on Christmas Eve. The more the merrier, of course!! Could have had a few more as well. One of our family Christmas traditions is to decorate gingerbread houses on Christmas Eve. This started as an activity to help occupy my children who were counting minutes until Santa would come. Depending on the number of children involved, we sometimes use the elementary school approach of gluing the graham crackers onto a milk carton. Other years we just decorate one large one. But this year we had 7 children that had very definite ideas about house decorating. Everyone had a good time. I think that more candy ended up in tummies than on houses.
Another Christmas Eve tradition is the story Davey and the First Christmas by Charlotte Byj. My Grandma Kerksiek used to read this story to us each year. I found a copy on EBAY (where else?) and we continue this tradition in our family. The kids had to listen extra closely this year - I lost my voice a few days ago and it is still trying to come back.

Bratislava ... where's that?

That's in Slovakia, if you were wondering. Nate was in Bratislava for work for the past 2 weeks. He got to do a little bit of sightseeing while he was there. Bratislava is about 45 minutes from Vienna, so he visited there also. Nate found that he could understand a lot of what the Slovaks said and could read a lot also, thanks to serving a mission in Bulgaria. You never know when that experience will pay off!

Wear 'em out

Jake and Amy and their children have been visiting with us for the past week or so. Needless to say that 7 children together can be tiring for the adults after a couple of days. So to wear them out and assure an early go to sleep time, we took them to the park. As always we came home with pockets full of rocks! Hazel just likes to watch everyone else play -- and to eat the rocks.