Puzzles, Decoys, and Mountains of Soda!

Christmas always feels like such a whirlwind.

Always fun, but definitely a whirlwind.

Elmer Sam Works His Magic

The boys have been desperate to open up a just one present....just one!

They have been asking Santa, by way of our beloved elf, Elmer Sam, if he could send them one to hold them over until the big day.

Finally, today, Elmer Sam surprised them with a scavenger hunt through the house that led them to their long awaited gifts.

Oh the excitement!

Sadly, they weren't specific enough about what type of early present they wanted to open!

Blessings

Father Boor blessed a few of Luke's First Communion presents at the Pracht Christmas party.

He brought a crucifix from Gran, and a St. Luke medal that he picked out from Aunt Mag and Great Grandpa.

I love that he really appreciates those gifts.  

I love even more that he wanted them blessed.

Grrrrrrr

I left a small Dillons bag of trash on the counter when we left today.

Sadly, it contained some apparently delicious smelling fast food containers and a not-quite-empty-enough bag of flour.

Graduation

On Sunday, Ben graduated with a Bachelors of Science in Criminal Justice.

If you ask him, it's not really a big deal, but he's worked really hard to get to this point.

He did less than awesome at his first attempt at college--really he just never went!  He decided to give it another try about the time that Luke was born.

The number of credits he needed was overwhelming at first.  He worked nights most of those years, so he had to figure out how to work sleep and classes into his days, and he studied through three babies.  

It took a lot of dedication, but he trudged through and 16 1/2 years after he graduated high school, he finally has his college degree--and a high GPA to boot! 

We are all really proud of him!

He absolutely did not want to walk--I can't really blame him--but his mom and I talked him in to it.  We both thought it was important for the boys to see the end product of all of his hard work!

The Gun Club

Grandpa John is a sucker for buying hunting guns.

I could count on one hand the number of times that he has gone hunting in the last 25 years, but it doesn't stop him from adding to his collection!

He's welcomed Luke into the club!

On the way home from Amy's at Thanksgiving, we stopped at Bass Pro and bought him a Red Rider bee bee gun.  

Luke's pretty excited about it!

I don't think he's actually gotten to try it out, but I'm betting that the next time Ben goes hunting, Luke will be tagging along with his new gun!

Union Station

Last weekend we kicked off the Christmas season in Kansas City.

We took the kids to Union Station.

It was like a trip to the North Pole!

They got to color pictures and write letters to Santa.  There was also a train to ride in, and a huge model train village set up.  Plus there was a ton of other things to look at and do!

It was a really magical place!  

We'll have to make it a regular event!

We're Ready for December!

This year we got smart about decorating for Christmas.

First, we got an artificial Christmas tree.

I feel like I should be sad that we didn't get a real one, but I'm not in the least. 

Generally we put our tree up two weeks before Christmas and it's always super dry by Christmas Day--it doesn't help that we always forget to water it.  I spend the first two weeks of December dreading having to decorate it and the next two weeks dreading the mess of taking it all down.

This year it was up and decorated while we were all still excited about it.  Plus, I won't have to continually battle with Ben about keeping the lights on.  To him, real trees are just piles of kindling waiting to go up in flames.

Second, we got all the ornaments laid out before we turned the kids loose.

It takes much longer to get an ornament out of it's box, than it does to hang it on the tree.  With three eager kids, that leads to a grabby, arguing, stressful tree-trimming night.  

Not fun!

It went much better when the kids were greeted with a sea of ornaments just waiting to be hung up. 

On top of that we managed to use every single one of our ornaments.

I don't think that has ever happened.  The boys' bedroom trees in their bedrooms are completely full of ornaments, but they are on display none-the-less!

The boys are still working on adding houses and trees to their Christmas Village--it's expanded enough to be moved to the hallway--but otherwise our Christmas decorating was done by the end of the Thanksgiving weekend.

If I could just get my presents wrapped by the end of the weekend, which, by some miracle I have almost all of my list already bought and checked off, I think I may just have a low stress December!