The Hendrickson Family: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

We had a great Christmas together this year! Our celebration started Christmas Eve night. Dean's sister Toni and her husband Jason and their kids Jordan and Caleb came over for homemade pizza. Dean's brother Keith and his wife Sheri came over a little after dinner too. We were also joined by a friend named Carmen. We met her through Toni and Jason and she has become a part of the family as well since she is far from her family (she is from Columbia) After pizza the kids opened a few gifts and then everyone headed home. Our boys decorated some yummy cookies for Santa and then put on their new jammies and went to bed.

Santa's cookies with a generous helping of sprinkles.

I think this may have been the first year that the boys woke us up Christmas morning. Usually Dean is the first one awake and ready to get the boys up to open presents. We did still need to get Griffen up as he likes to sleep a little later than his brothers. It was a beautiful scene outside with all of our snow and the boys really enjoyed their presents. We were originally planning to head to Longview Christmas afternoon to be with family for dinner but since we had so much snow, Dean had to work on Friday. Thankfully he went to the store Wednesday afternoon and picked up a small ham for us. So after a day of playing with the new toys, we ate a yummy dinner of ham, mashed potatoes, rolls, and corn. A pretty good last minute Christmas dinner.

Christmas morning!

When Dean got home on Friday we left for Longview. When we arrived at my parents house, we opened gifts with them, had a little snack then headed for Dean's granparents. We had dinner at his grandparents house that night along with his aunt and uncle, mom and dad, and Toni and Jason and their kids. Then we got to open MORE presents with all of them. Saturday was another busy day of visiting friends and family topped off with another Christmas dinner, this time with my mom and dad. The highlight of my Saturday was going to my aunt's house and learning how to make lefse. My grandma even came over and supervised the lesson. We returned home Sunday morning.

Gift opening at Great Grandma and Great Grandpa's house.

Four generations of Mahlums

We spent new years with friends of ours at their house. There were five families altogether and we had a great time of playing games, eating good food, and just hanging out. The only bummer of the night was that our poor little Griff, after playing and having lots of fun, ended up getting a headache and then threw up a couple of time. He spent most of the rest of the night sleeping on my lap. We attempted to celebrate the east coast new year so that kids could go to sleep if they wanted but we missed it by three minutes. Then we tried again with the next two time zones without success but it didn't matter because all of the kids made it to midnight. it was a very fun night with friends made even better when Griffen woke up the next morning feeling perfectly fine.