Festivities

Here's our Christmas week:

Tuesday night we stayed up putting Ollie's tool bench (from the Smith's) together:

All the pieces...

Joel putting the tool bench together.

Wednesday morning: Our newest family tradition--Druber's for donuts!

Ollie was watching Santa saying "Santa, lap?" We told him he could sit on Santa's lap if he wanted to. He refused once we got up there though, which was fine. He kept saying later "scared". He already has a pretty good grip of reality though--on the way home he said, "Santa, wig?" Yep.The finished product from the night before.

Ollie playing with his tool bench. It was a BIG hit!!!!

Later that day we went to our church's Christmas Eve service, then to my parents for supper and opening gifts. Here's Ollie and Joel--my sister made this cute holder for Ollie! (I have no idea why this is all of a sudden underlining, but I can't figure out how to fix it.)
Ollie with one of the train sets he got--this one runs on batteries!

Grandpa ("J") and Ollie playing with the train Christmas morning.

We stayed at my parents house until Friday morning--enjoyed good food, lots of relaxing, and a wonderful time with my sister and mom and dad. Unfortunately, my brother and his family couldn't be there--but we did manage to get them on our webcam while we opened gifts--see bottom photo for more!
As you can see--we spent lots of time playing with toys--this is Joel and dad's tracks and racecars--Ollie LOVED them!

Here's our attempt at a family picture. You can see Tyler, Erin and Addilyn on the computer behind us--that's how we opened presents--we could watch each other. Then, Courtney "brought" them to our Christmas Eve service and they could "participate" in that over the computer. It was pretty darn funny though, to see them swaying to the music, clapping when appropriate, and lighting their own candles during the singing part. Funny funny.

Oh yeah, and do you see the guy beside me? The one with the rubber band on his head and a goofy face? He's the other one who is difficult to photograph...