Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I've been away from my blog for a week. It's been a good one. We celebrated Christmas despite the crazy snowy road conditions. We made it to Grandma and Grandpa's Christmas Eve and enjoyed tamales and sopa torasca, a tradition from Mexico that this Norwegian family has adopted. Yummy. Christmas day we traveled to Uncle Bob and Aunt Cindy's and were treated to Mr. Toad's Wild Ride on the way up to their house. The road conditions were so bad that Bob met us at the bottom of the hill and drove us up in his all-wheel drive SUV. It was actually pretty fun! Luke and Paul loved it. :-)
This past week we have worked on projects around the house. We replaced two light fixtures in the kitchen area and did some major clean up in the basement. Our basement up to this point has been functional but not fun. Lots of boxes and not a whole lot of organization. All that has changed. The main room down there is now home to two reasonably comfortable couches, a projector that produces a 110 inch picture, a scrapbooking bar, and a Wii. It's pretty awesome! We hosted Game Day today and had such a great time watching football with Erik's parents, Oma and the boys. We look forward to many more good times. If you want to come over and play, just give us a call!
And now, a few pictures of the week's events.

Luke with our new play mat. He loves it!

Paul with his new fire engine riding toy. He couldn't be more cute.

Luke with his new easel. Great gift, Aunt Nikki! He drew this tree himself.

Paul and friend on New Year's Eve. We rang in the New Year at 7:30pm. Such party animals.

Paul with his new wooden truck and horse from Aunt Krista. His words: "Yee HAW!"