Lundstrom Tradition: Abelskivers

Eric's mom's family is of Scandinavian descent, and so they have the tradition of having abelskivers, essentially round pancakes, every year for breakfast on Christmas morning. You dip them in powdered or granulated sugar, jam or whatever. Anyway, at that time, we thought we would be in WA for Christmas and so we did them for dinner the Sunday before we were supposed to leave. They were and are so yummy. I think we're going to have to make them more often than once a year from now on.

I found this note that Lillie wrote for my parents. It says: I love you.  I hope you have a wonderful Christmas.  I love Grandma and Grandpa.  I love it when I find things like this because even though her spelling may be way off, she's sounding things out.  She's taking on difficult words.  It makes me so proud!

Christmas in Solvang

 Eating some traditional Abelskivers in town.  They were good, but we can make them better.

 Some of the buildings.  The whole town is done like this, in the Danish/German/Scandinavian style.

 Old woman in the shoe

 This town is only 20 minutes from where we live, so we come pretty often to eat, shop and play.

 Family picture at the Hans Christian Andersen park

Medical Group Kid's Christmas Party

The medical group put on a Christmas party at the beginning of December. The kids got to do four different projects before Santa and Rudolph showed up to hand out presents to the kids. Henry was in love with Santa. It was a fun little party!

Gingerbread House

Ward Christmas Party

I cannot get my photos to rotate or upload correctly, so this is all I've got. Lillie is assisting in holding the Christmas star in the nativity picture.

Christmas Cookies

Before Christmas, a little group of us got together for a play date and decorating Christmas cookies with lots and lots of frosting and toppings. If a little is good, a ton is way better.

Lately...

Lately we've been busy getting ready for Christmas. I've almost gotten all my Christmas shopping done and wrapped. Lillie found the trampoline that was going to be pretty much the only thing the kids were getting this year a week or so ago. So, we've put it up in the yard and the kids have loved jumping on it. Good call on the tramp! Henry has still managed to fall off twice, but has not slowed him down. This weekend we finally got around to putting up some Christmas lights on the house. My kids LOVE seeing the Christmas lights around the neighborhood and town. It's still warm enough in the evening to go on walks and check out the lights. SO FUN! That is one good thing about Californians. I don't know if it's because it's not too cold and so they'll stay outside longer to put up all their lights or if it's because they're trying to compensate for the lack of winter weather, but there are so many decorated houses around us. It's great! We had our ward Christmas party on Saturday and Santa was there walking around during dinner to give candy canes to the kids. Henry ran straight over to him and gave him a big hug when he first saw him. It was cute. He is crazy about Christmas. He asks daily if Santa's coming today. He boasts about being on the "naughty ist" as if that's the cool thing to do. He is always talking about the Buzz Lightyear gun that Santa WILL bring him. Anyway, there was a really impressive program at the party and Lillie held the star during the Nativity Song. We were lucky enough to be able to get some time off, so we will be driving to WA for a week to spend Christmas with my family. It's been a long time since we've been there for Christmas, so I'm really excited. Well, excited for everything but the drive. I'm just worried about the road conditions. Fingers crossed! Lillie had her last day of preschool last week. We had to take her out because it was too expensive. She loved it and I loved it, but we just couldn't justify the price. So we'll be having school at home instead. On the last day as we were driving home I looked in my rear view mirror to see silent, giant tears rolling down Lillie's face. It absolutely broke my heart. She is quite the social butterfly and will miss preschool.

Happy Thanksgiving 2012

Today I am so thankful for my little family. I feel so blessed to have the three of them in my life. They bring me such happiness and joy, I often wonder how I got so lucky. I love you guys! I am also thankful for Eric's and my family, I wish that we were able to spend today with them. But I am so grateful to have friends who are celebrating Thanksgiving with us, the Thomas' have been such a blessing for us and our kids. I don't know how we would have survived living here without them. They're awesome. I am thankful for Eric's job and that I am able to stay home to be with my kids, I love it. And most of all I am thankful for a loving Heavenly Father. Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!

Merry Christmas!

This Monday we traded off picture taking with our friends. This is the best one of us. Both Lillie and Henry had their moments of not cooperating, so I'm very glad to get ONE. Just need to photoshop out a few crazy stands of my hair. This will probably be the Christmas card. Send me your address if you want one. :)

Christmas Outfits

My kids wore the Christmas church clothes that my parents sent them today. They looked soo cute in them, but wouldn't cooperate enough to be in a picture at the same time. Sometimes we struggle.

My Birthday Pic

Sunset of my Life

Took this picture on Monday at Wall Beach. It's kind of a metaphor for my life. The sun is setting on my 20's. Last Friday I turned 29 and for the last month or so I've kind of been freaking out about oh no, the past 9 years were supposed to be the highlight of my life?? I've felt like the last 9 years were all school, school, school and poor, poor, super poor. So I've been worried about what I needed to do to make this next year the best ever. Now that I've had my birthday (and am therefore, older and wiser), I've decided that my life so far has been just fine, great even, and that anything to make this next year awesome would be really expensive and therefore out of the question. It is a pretty sunset, though.

Finally, Halloween 2012

Our New Fave Beach

Saturday evening we headed out to Wall Beach, a beach on the AFB. The beaches had just reopened after the unfortunate fatal shark attack that happened earlier this week just down the coast at Surf Beach. We didn't know much about this particular beach but the weather was so hot that day that we knew we'd better take advantage of it. Wall Beach is our favorite kind of beach: kinda rocky, with cliffs, and tidepools. We found starfish and urchins and dead crabs. It was so beautiful and of course we didn't bring a camera, so we used Eric's phone, which is why the pics are so blurry. Best thing is that it's only 15 minutes from our house! I hope this hot weather continues just a little longer so that we can get back there again.

Pumpkin Carving

It's finally close enough to Halloween to carve our pumpkins!  Talk about a wild Friday night, right?  Anway, Halloween tunes played courtesy of Pandora while we tried to not cut ourselves with the knife or touch the slimy innards.  Lillie's pumpkin face was an original, designed by her (cut out by her dad, obviously).  She was particularly proud of how her jagged teeth turned out.  Very scary.  Henry's attention span was about 3 minutes, so I worked out your typical jack-o-lantern expression solito.  I think he approved though.  Good times!

Trunk or Treat 2012

Wolf on the Prowl



Showing his Beastly Side

Bean Bag Toss

Red Riding Hood, Granny, Wolf and Woodsman

Close up of Henry's Chocolate Mug