Happy New Year!

Well, that was a very long vacation in which I wrote nothing . . .  no blog posts, nothing in my journal, no Christmas letters, not even any sermon notes to speak of. We had church canceled two Sundays in a row and we were gone another weekend. That means we spent one Sunday at our little white church on the prairie in the month of December.

December began with Tuba Christmas on the first Saturday of the month. It was held at the historic Paramount Theatre in Austin MN and I missed it this year which makes me very sad.

On the first Sunday of December Mrs. Jakobson's students presented a Christmas Piano Concert. Krysta and I attended that and loved it after missing a couple years. Visiting with parents and nibbling delicious Christmas cookies ended the afternoon event.

On the first Tuesday the ladies at the Baptist Church host a Christmas Tea Party. We listened to beautiful music then moved to the basement for a real Tea complete with dainty sandwiches, salad, cookies, tea (of course) and coffee for the Norwegians among us. White tablecloths and lovely table settings along with soft lighting gave an enchanted feeling to the room.

We packed our bags and headed to Cherry Creek SD on the 8th of December. We were part of a group from our church that visited the little mission church there. We hand delivered Christmas bundles Friday and Saturday, traveling many miles over gravel roads to ranches in that area and
some small towns.

Some high lights to remember - the Christmas Program given by the school children, climbing *Holy Hill* that overlooks the town of Cherry Creek, Coffee Shoppe Friday evening when neighbors came from miles around to play games, visit, color, do word searches and sip coffee or tea or hot chocolate. (The girls had another name for this but it slips from my memory just now.) I will put in Coffee Shoppe until someone corrects me or I find the paper with the real name written on it. We had a good time getting to know new friends and old.

The drive home Sunday afternoon/evening was memorable as well. The closer we got to MN the more snow we saw. Winter arrived in our absence.

Krysta flew to Spokane WA on the 13th. Deanne picked her up at the airport. Here is where we began to spend quite a bit of time on the phone txting to find out arrival times and just checking in with family. Krysta went to school with Deanne and met her students. They got to have some quality sister time as well with all the traveling from western MT to MN. They started out the 16th after school was finished for the day. They were all packed and drove east towards Jeremy and Liz's place.

The girls ended up staying there Saturday and Sunday then traveled home Monday, the 19th. While they were in MT they missed out on the school program here and also the youth banquet. We had Christmas caroling on the evening of the 22nd. We had a snowstorm on the 23rd. Brunch/lunch with Evan and Chelsea on the 24th. Christmas Day church was canceled but we drove to our friends for lunch. We spent the evening with my mom then made lefse and Swedish meatballs for supper Monday evening. Jorgan and Zoey arrived later that evening and we opened gifts and took many pictures for Jeremy and Liz.

Tuesday we rented the local township hall and went over there to play games and make pizza. It has been a little while since I've heard the Pit game being played. That used to be me yelling at the top of my lungs trying to make myself heard. hmmm!

We had a couple days to slowly wind down before Deanne left for the west on Friday the 30th.
How can the days go by so fast? We still didn't get a family picture of all of us together at the same time. So I will have to do a collage of pictures and hopefully get them printed and sent out to friends and family before many more days - weeks - months pass. 

That's just a quick run down of  December. Krysta and I yelled "Happy New Year!" to each other from our beds when the clock struck 12:00 New Year's Eve, waking up Ellis for a moment and then we all settled down for a long winter's nap.