A Healthy and Happy Christmas!

By God's grace, our house overcame the contagion of conjunctivitis just before Christmas.  We were back on our feet in time for the Christmas Eve service at church.  Praise the Lord!

We snapped this photo after the service.  These are our munchkins with my best friend's munchkins.  Gotta love this crew!  Six boys is a ton of fun and a ton of chaos.  We're gonna miss the Arthur boys like crazy when we head back to Kenya.

And here's us in front of our Christmas tree.  Proof that we were healthy again and dressed in our finest for Christmas Eve.  (Yes, flannel is our finest.  We spent four years in Duluth, ya know.)

Right before bed we continued our tradition of letting the boys open a present on Christmas Eve - always a new pair of jammies for them to wake up in the next day.

Eli told them to stand like superheroes.  Hence Kai's extreme face.  He's not angry - just superhero serious.  

I absolutely love waking up on Christmas morning with these boys.  So much excitement, so much energy, so much squealing!  They were the most thrilled with these additions to their Star Wars collection.  They played with this stuff the entire morning until it was time to head over Grandma and Grandpa Clark's...

...which prepared them for the lightsaber duel of the year.

And then it was off to Minnesota for Christmas: Round Two.  More presents.  More cousins.  More runaround fun to be had!  The boys wasted no time in finding all the weapon toys at Grandma and Grandpa Horn's house.  Many a monster was defeated that night.

And guess what - we found snow!  There's been next to none in Michigan so far and I promised the boys that Minnesota would have snow.  There wasn't any when we first drove into St. Paul, but when we drove another hour north to the farm, the snow came.  Our boys had a blast playing outside with their cousins.  It was a perfect play-in-the-snow kind of day.

We're so thankful for a wonderful Christmas this year.  A healthy and happy Christmas filled with family and fun!

All We Want for Christmas Is...

...health.

We've recently been reminded of the downsides of winter.  Namely, sickness followed by contagion among young children.

Our house has been sick for over two weeks.  It began with a typical cold virus, which quickly cycled through 4 of us (Eli was spared).  Just when we thought it was behind us, Caleb woke up with eye goop one morning.  It quickly got worse and it became clear our house had been hit with conjunctivitis.  It wasted little time in spreading from kid #1 to kid #2, then swiftly moved to kid #3.

So we've been in lockdown mode, quarantining our boys from all contact with the outside world and washing hands and clothes and bedsheets like it's our job (because it is).

But such is life in winter in the Midwest!

I'd like to point out what troopers our boys have been.  It's not easy getting through a day when your eyes are squirting goop like there's nothing better to do.  But I gotta say, these boys have handled their woes like champs!  This may not look like the face of a champ, but I can vouch that it is:

Throughout all the sickness, they have kept their eyes on Christmas (sometimes literally as we've let these kiddos watch a ton of TV/Christmas movies to keep them distracted from all the blech).  They know that Christmas is coming, which is strengthening their resolve to beat these viruses.  We think the worst is behind us now (fingers crossed!), so we're hoping and praying for complete health for Christmas this year.

Gingerbread Houses...and a Smooch!

Recently we gathered with my sister's crew to build gingerbread houses.  Despite the frosting not working well and some structures falling apart, the kids loved it.  Who doesn't love an excuse to play with candy (and snitch some candy)?

Kai, ever the builder, was very focused and built a strong gingerbread house.  He covered the roof with snow and built a snowman in the front yard that melted rather quickly :)

Inspired by Kai's snowman, Asa wanted a snowman also.  His also "melted" rather quickly.  I helped Asa put a face on the poor guy, but he wanted to add a piece of candy for himself.  I thought he was adding onto the smile, but then he declared to everyone that his snowman "has a nose, eyeballs, a smile, and a smooch!"  And sure enough, there was a little orange smooch on the snowman's cheek :)

The last couple years we made gingerbread houses at Tenwek with all the other MKs, but we had to make the gingerbread from scratch.  Let me tell ya, making these beauties out of pre-made gingerbread already cut to size is definitely the way to go!

Life in a Blur

So apparently November just came and went!  I shouldn't be surprised, as time has a tendency to do that, but it's amazing to realize how much faster life seems to move in America than it does in Kenya.  Life doesn't move slowly in Kenya (at least not for us Americans), but it does move slower than life here.  At least that's what I've decided after the last seven months of life in America!

Since life has been a blur, filled with wonderful and good things (but still in a blur), I'm gonna post a smattering of photos that encapsulate our life recently.  Lots of trips, lots of time spent with people, a bit of homeschooling in the middle, and lots of never-ending "life chores" as we like to call 'em.

So here's an overview of what we've been up to:

In the middle of everything, trick-or-treating did happen for these munchkins.  They had talked about it for weeks because, duh, free candy and, duh, costumes in public.  I very much prefer to be creative with Halloween costumes, but when you're not home even half the time, the creative juices are not flowing and you grab whatever costumes are hanging in the closet.  Two superheroes and a Sith lord.  Check, check, check!  We tagged along with Corrie's and Aubree's families - two of my closest friends from childhood.  Since they both have all boys as well, there were eight boys in our crew running through the neighborhood on a sugar high.  Life doesn't get much better than that!

Asa has been practicing his Maasai warrior skills...

Also, this has been happening, sort of.  Potty training just isn't a priority right now.  We haven't dived in, but are kinda sorta encouraging this.  That's all we can muster these days!

We enjoyed the first snowfall of the season!  It was a wet, sticky snow - perfect for making snowballs and throwing them against the garage door.  It was the first time Asa has ever played in the snow and it was super fun to watch our boys enjoy winter!

We went to Florida!  It was a family trip with my family to celebrate my dad's retirement.  We did a lot: Disney, Gatorland, Busch Gardens, Medieval Times, and Legoland.  The kids had a blast, and we appreciated warm weather once again.

After Florida we headed to Georgia to spend Thanksgiving with Eli's grandma and extended family.  It was such a fun and refreshing time.  And we had such a feast!  Eli's family were amazing hosts and we're so grateful we had the chance to be there.  Here are 4 generations of Hallquists/Horns:

On the drive back to Michigan (did I mention that we drove to Florida and back???) we stopped at Mammoth Cave just for fun.  Our boys loved it!

After all that, we made it home and soon got a Christmas tree.  Meaning, we went to my parents' house and cut down a tree from their property because free trees are the best trees!

And now we are home again.  We're thankful for the Christmas tree and its lights that greet us every day, and for Christmas music that puts us in the holiday spirit.  We're glad to be here for Christmas this year and enjoy the typical American traditions.  We even love winter!  It's great to see snow and sleep on flannel sheets and drink hot chocolate.  It's a good time of year to be in America.