Tag Archive | South Carolina

Christmas Eve in Minnesota

NOTE THERE IS A PICTURE ENTRY THAT GOES WITH THIS ONE WITH THE REST OF THE PICTURES!

Has officially come and gone and was, I figure, a success… the kids are well toyed, family has been celebrated with by the end of the week we will be back to the Reinsch-Johnson normal!

Ready to party

Goofy excited kids

Let’s start with the Mandyke side of the family (Ken’s mom) and Christmas Eve… A rather traditional Ukrainian dinner with perogies, potato soup and gunk (no one seems to remember the “real” name for that one) oh and OUR traditional Chocolate Candy Cane cake only made into cupcakes and iced with cream cheese icing instead of cool whip.

The table

Sitting down to supper – with T.J.

Cupcakes

Ken’s uncle Paul, aunt Colleen and cousins Melissa and T.J. all came for supper and visiting… and presents for the kids! The twins each got their own ant farm, I am not sure who is more excited… them or Ken!!! Emanuel got a bowling set and Miss Trinity a drawing one with those dry erase crayons. When we first purchased that product over a year ago in Canada I was unimpressed… they were REALLY hard to erase… now over a year later they are much better. Though you do still need to work a little at the erasing.

Gavin and the bowling set

Echo got a bag full of BALLS! Which of course created the catalyst for a massive ball explosion. There was also a SILLY STRING WAR! Do you know, I have never seen silly string in person before? Just on tv… it is much less… wet than I expected. The guys went all out on that one… but I think Nana won with her sneak attack on T.J.

Silly string monster

There was lots of visiting and reminiscing. T.J. is in grade 8 and on the VARSITY wrestling team (I am told this is a big accomplishment), I do believe tentative plans were being made for some of the family to go see some of his competitions. I know our nephew Zachary has just started wrestling so I am sure he would enjoy and probably learn something from going to some of the events.

Wrestling

Trinity and Emanuel went out and spread their reindeer food before dinner. (Remember their making it HERE?)

Feeding the deer

After saying good bye to family it was time to get in the Christmas pj’s and get those Santa cookies and milk out and ready. Though I am kicking myself, I forgot all about setting up our Advent set (the Little People one)… When we were digging out the table decorations and such Nana found a special plate and mug for Santa so we had a great set up with all the stockings in a row. Of course we had our yearly complaining by Ken about how PLAIN his stocking is. I really need to sit down and find a suitable stocking pattern and get one done up for him as well!

Matching

Ready for Santa

With our Canadian Christmas set up in the basement – gifts mailed in from friends and family, the presents from Ken and myself to the kids and the Santa gifts WE had a hand in and of course the ones to each other we were rather good to go. There were packages from Canada, Texas AND South Carolina under there, quite the full and pretty tree!

Ready for the kids