Christmas and New Years

We had such a special Christmas gathering with our dear friends. I always love learning how different cultures celebrate holidays and this year we got to join in on some special Norwegian traditions, such as smoked salmon sandwiches, rice pudding (with an almond hidden in one of the bowls - and whoever finds it gets a prize!) and hot gløgg.

Singing Christmas carols

Yohanis enjoying baby Mikael snuggles.

What a great group of kids we have!

Baby love!

We played two truths and a lie. Oh my goodness, it was hilarious and we laughed so hard!

The cutest little Santa!

Opening a few presents from their grandparents on Christmas Eve.

Reading by the fire and sleeping in the living room on Christmas Eve.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

We had an eventful Christmas morning. We were awakened abruptly by loud rattling and our room shaking! Joel jumped out of bed and shouted: "EARTHQUAKE!" and we ran downstairs and quickly woke up the kids. We all ran outside and huddled under blankets in our yard. We waited outside for awhile and then called some neighbors to see if they were outside too, then laughed when we realized there weren't many people outside of their houses besides us. Oh well, better safe than sorry. It was only a 3.8 earthquake, but the epicenter was close to us and it felt very strong and scary! It was a Christmas morning we won't forget, that's for sure!

Skyping with our families.

On Christmas evening we went to hang out with some of our best friends! So thankful for these guys - I love our big loud crazy bunch!

A delicious lunch with this special family!!

After lunch our friends took us to some thermal springs nearby. We had fun enjoying the warm water on a cold day and munching on delicious German cookies and drinking hot cider!

And ringing in the New Year with this fun bunch of people!