Happ - Happiest Season of All!

Does anyone else get a little sad when the holidays end... they haven't even ended yet, but just the thought of returning to "normal life" makes me a little blue. That means Fisher will go back to school and we won't get to see family almost everyday (which is a good thing if you like your family) and no more games every night (which is a good thing too). It has been a great Christmas! A little hectic at times, but so much fun to see Curly get excited about giving and receiving gifts (obviously she liked the receiving part more). We were lucky to have my sister spend Christmas with us. She spent the summer at BYU-Jerusalem and I guess that inspired the rest of my family (except my brother and his wife) to go to Israel for a 15 day tour during Christmas... so poor Kristi had to hang out with us and Fisher's family. We loved it!

Some Favorite Christmas traditions with Fisher's family -

- The sibling gift exchange and opening of "The White Stocking." The stocking is the special secret container for our goals for the year. We write them on index cards, fold them in half and put our name on the front, then put them in a stocking made of white lace. Mom Lake puts them away and then at the end of the year we get to review our goals and make new ones. I actually achieved 3 of my 4 goals this year! Don't be too impressed, one of the goals was to actually plan 4 meals each week and then prepare them.

-The "Puddles Print" - This tradition started when Fisher and his siblings were little and had to wait for their parents to get up before opening their stockings on Christmas morning. I am not sure of the exact history, but they created a "Puddles Print" newspaper for their parents one year - with each child contributing stories, cartoons, etc... Every year after that they would do some project to kill time until their parents woke up. The Puddles Print has continued with all the original siblings and inlaws contributing and Fisher's sister in law compiling the paper. She always does a fabulous job and it so fun to read and see what a creative family we have.

- The German Christmas Eve party. My mother-in-law and her only brother are fully German. Every Christmas Eve we get together for a traditional German dinner - Rouladin, Roetkoe, and potato dumplings with gravy. I like all the food, except for the potato dumplings - they take hours to make and taste like tasteless, dry tapioca pudding squished into a big heavy ball. But, don't put too much stock in my critique. The Lake family loves them (or at least their German pride requires that they say that). This year we also did a nativity with the children. Curly was supposed to be a "lepard" (shepard), but decided to be grumpy instead. Louwas a sweet little angel.

- Christmas Gift Riddles - Dad Lake labels all the Christmas gifts with picture and word riddles. You can't just hand out the gifts because you don't know who they are for.

- Saturday bowling - The Saturday after Christmas the whole family goes bowling at 7:30 a.m. The original reason for going so early is that the games were super cheap that early in the morning, I guess the tradition stuck. After bowling, the whole family eats brunch together. There was one hitch this year, the traditional bowling alley was set for demolition...so we had to wait to go later and pay three times the price at a fancy bowling alley. It was still well worth it.