New Year's Eve

After enjoying dinner at Sangria with Bon and Rob, we are teaching the older two kids how to play Cranium and Settlers of Catan. It's fun that Signe and Gunnar are old enough to join us in playing more adult games.
Here Gunnar correctly guessed that Nick was sculpting a television.

The snow beast ran over Gunnar. And other snowy adventure pics.

Snow beast and snow bunny.

Christmas partiers and tackler.

This Christmas carol came apart quickly at the end. The funniest part is Karsten blasting back in to the picture, but that doesn't phase Gunnar at all (tackles are normal operating procedure in these parts), but he is upset that Signe tried to do the high part and he couldn't maintain the melody anymore.

Christmas partiers.

Christmas party

Christmas Eve party continued...

Christmas Eve party

Signe gets her first phone... uh-oh!

Christmas morning carnage continued...

Christmas morning carnage.

Grandma, thanks for making us these cool blankets!

Can you tell where we are from?

I liked the contrast of bright t-shirts as Dad helps Karsten assemble a present. And the second picture is a lovely print I received as a gift, designed by a friend of ours here in town named Hannah Grieser.

Merry Christmas!!

Zane decorated a magnet at school that he was thrilled to give us in a personally decorated bag. The boys got OSU shirts from Nana and Papa that Grandpa would love. I think I might regret getting Zane such a humongous plane, although he is thrilled. And Lucy found some presents to be very handy in front of the fire.

Looks like it's a white Christmas for the north Idaho Holloways. Merry Christmas everyone!

Look at them diggers.

White Christmas

This is the view out of my kitchen window the morning of December 24th.

Populi Christmas party... my date is pretty good looking.

Things I do when I should be doing other things

Yes, I ought to have wrapped presents or gone grocery shopping this morning, but I didn't (so we are having oatmeal for lunch). Instead I wasted an enjoyable chunk of time duct-taping the boy's sword box. It was a ragged, ugly, falling-apart box that several years ago housed our new weed-eater, and its days were numbered. But is is so very handy as a place to store weapons like light sabers and foam swords that I thought it worth redeeming before it collapsed completely. I think it should now survive until all my kids move out of the house.

1st day of Christmas break

Signe directed her brothers to draw (well, she did most of the drawing) puppet figures with toothpick handles. They are practicing their performance now. Gunnar built a western-themed diorama, complete with a cowboy hiding in the bushes and another bleeding on the ground.

Kids walking home, dad's ready to be done too.

Signe snow bunny and snow angels.