Christmas Festivities

Josh and I attended a beautiful candelight church service on Sunday morning.  The service was quite special and I'm so glad I had this opportunity.  Also, I could have spent the whole morning singing the beautiful Christmas songs.  The song service is always my favorite part of church services, but Christmas songs have a special place in my heart and I could sing along for a while.

Then, I spent some time  Sunday evening wrapping gifts.  I love taking care to wrap gifts beautifully, and it was quite a luxury to have enough time to do this.  I also like it when my gifts under the tree coordinate, so I get metallic wrapping paper on sale at Target every year, and then spice up things with ribbon.  Since I had quite a lot of ribbon leftover from Cassie's wedding programs back in August, I used the ribbon to adorn the gifts.  I'm a little partial, but I think it turned out quite lovely.

Last week, we had a blizzard...which makes everything feel like Christmas (I posted about the storm as it was happening here).  I love how beautiful the icicles and fluffy snow looks in frozen tundra.

On Christmas, we were up in Minneapolis with the Huntley side of the family (see our Thanksgiving festivities here).  To spice things up, I challenged all the cousins to wear ugly sweaters (I had my awesome shirt from this holiday party earlier in December).  I think we should do this every year. 

We're one good-looking bunch

Yummy desserts

Awkward family photos

Josh rocks this sweater.

A toast to our Kappa legacy!

We ended the night at Josh's parents' farm with a game of Monopoly.  It's kind of a tradition to play as a family during the holidays.  I'm not competitive, yet I won this year.  Score!  $20 for me!

Winning.

We still have two Christmas celebrations this week.  Sophie can't wait to wear her Mrs. Claus outfit for them.