Christmas part 2

Saturday night we celebrated our "Hemmer Christmas", at Rick's parents house. We had a yummy meal and after clean up settled in to open presents.

Here's some pictures below for you to enjoy.

Ricks mom

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Ryan and Brice taking it easy before gift opening

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Granapa Hemmer and Brice ( Brice is secretly opening Grnadma's present...she hasnt noticed yet)

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The boys

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Rick carving the ham, Gavin and Ryan chilling

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The Girls, Jill - Kellie- Brianna

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Chris, Brice and Gavin (getting ready to receive presents)

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Brad telling Chris all about stocks and bonds....I think

A new addition to the family

We Purchased a new (used) car today and Gavin will most likely be the driver of it....Spoiled rotten kid.

2000 Chevy Prizm

2 blogs and a million pictures.....check it all out below.

Hope you all had a great Christmas

Christmas morning

Here's what I found Christmas morning....Brice eating sausage, cheese and crackers while watching "Its a wonderful life". He's such a silly boy and just makes me giggle. After a bit I woke gavin up so we could open gifts.

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The boys trying to figure out whose gift this is???

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Brianna and Chris got here shortly after we finished gifts, so then we had round 2......

Here we all are, I just love my family, I feel so blessed that we can all be together on Christmas. After gifts I whipped up some French toast and sausage patties and we had a breakfast feast.

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Keep reading...... More Christmas fun below.

Christmas day at Grandpa and Gran Ericksons

So after our morning festivities we packed it up and headed to my mom & dad's house for the big Erickson gathering...Everyone was there. (all 21 of us and later my cousin and her family which adds 4 more) We had a great time as always. Mom put on a feast of Turkey and all the stuff that goes with it. We really never stopped eating. The grandkids are in the picture below.

Far left: Jamey my oldest nephew and his fiance Kate (yellow). Back row: Megan, (Jamey's sister), Gavin, Brice. Sam (sitting on Gavin's lap in middle),Front: Alexandra with Grant in her lap, Jensen(in Brianna's lap) and Chris.

My Brother Randy's kids, Alexandra and Grant

Mom and Dad

Nephew Jamey and fiance kate.

Jensen, just being cute.

Sam, tackling his pile of presents

The "kid table" minus Alexandra cuz she leaned way back in her chair when

I snapped the picture.

Dad bringing the cookie tray around....like we really needed cookies after that meal.

Chris playing with the young-uns.

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After our big day we all traveled back to our house to hang out. Jennifer came over

for a brief visit, so we all sat in the living room and chatted.

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It was a l-o-n-g day....everyone was tired but there was one of us that was especially sleep deprived from working overnights right before Christmas eve.

Sleeping soundly Christmas night.

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We have the "Hemmer Christmas" on Saturday, so there will be another Christmas update, like it or not......

Merry Christmas friends....

And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so?

It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags.

And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore.

Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before....

What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store.

What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.~Dr. Seuss

and here's the "MORE"...

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And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them,
Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
LUKE 2:8-14

there really are elves.....

Well can you tell I've been busy???? No blog updates for almost a week, that's gotta be a record for me, Cheri is even going through withdrawl, commenting that she needs me to update....Ha
Well I was a little crabby this week cuz I had to work 4 days...blah, I'm much too busy to be working that much.
Monday:cant remember what I did.

Tuesday: Mom and dad stopped by for a little visit to see our Christmas tree, they stay till 10:00 cuz we had to watch the final episode of "The biggest loser".

Wednesday: Came home from work and a Christmas Elf had been here. I walked into the kitchen to a counter that was half full of "Kiss cookies", I tell you what.... All ya gotta do is whine a little bit and leave the ingredients out in clear sight and be good all year long and look what happens....the elf comes. I wonder if I whine some more, maybe all my gifts will get wrapped :)
Thursday: (my only day off) I spent most of the day running errands, doing laundry, and feeling like a chicken with my head chopped off. Thursday night I met 6 friends at Chateau Theater and we saw the movie "awake". It was good, but we're all nurses and found so many faults with the medical stuff....ahhhh haaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Today: Had a dreadful day at work, sigh. Rick and I enjoyed a nice dinner at Macaroni grill. It was good to see you sara, and to finally meet Mike. (wink, wink) After dinner, we decided to try and finish up the Christmas shopping. Rick was my good luck charm because we got quite a lot accomplished. Only a few things to finish up tomorrow.

Hope you're all enjoying this wonderful time of year when our Savior Chris Jesus was born. He was the most perfect gift of all :)
Hope you all enjoy time with family and friends, be safe .

MY FUN SHOPPING WEEKEND

Brianna and I planned for an overnight shopping trip this weekend so here's some of our fun experiances....


We stayed in a hotel in brunsville. It was a lovely place, and close to everything. We shopped first in the Burnsville center, and then headed out to eat supper.
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We ended up at an "Old Chicago", neither Brie or me had ever been to one. We split a meal and decided to check out a movie in Lakeville, about 6 miles away.
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This is us(being very frightened) in the parking lot, after the movie walking back to the car in the dark. We saw the movie "Iam Legend" which was very scary, we watched most of the movie through our fingers and had many audible screams. (Too scary for me)
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Saturday morning we got up and had the continental breakfast at the hotel, then we headed over to Southdale mall. Brianna made a haul, buying herself Christmas present from money that the Grandparents gave her. It's a fun mall to browse. When Brie was done spending we hopped back in the car and headed over to St. Paul to pick up brice for lunch. Yay.....we got to see Bricey, we ate at "Bonfires" it was yummy !!! Brice showed us some of his work that he's doing for school....pretty amazing stuff.

Here we all are out in front of Brice's condo, it was a fun 2 days spent with my daughter(doing what we do best....shopping) and getting to hang out with Brice is a extra bonus :)

A couple of christmas pics from my house....

The fireplace/mantle

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I want you to notice the pretty little pillow that i received tonight at "girls night" . Thank you Sara...it's so pretty and perfect in my chair.

I had a pretty busy day today, but fun.

This morning i meet a friend for Coffee, We had a good time catching up with what's been going on in our lives. Our kids are always a hot topic.

From there I picked up Gavin so He and I could go to the dentist, I really dont like the dentist, I get all stiff and anxiety ridden.

Next I met my mom, for lunch at Culvers and then we went power shopping all afternoon. It was fun and we got lots of presents bought.

Got home and went to supper with Rick, we talked about our day and got all caught up with each other.

Came home and immediatley went up to Cheri's for "girls night" which I always love... we have so much fun, we can be quite amused be each other, For those of you who read....I love you all :) Sara, surprised us all with those cute little pillows in that 2nd picture....fun. I got see Cara (cheri's daughter, Brianna's best friend), she's home for break, so that was sweet since we dont get to see her nearly enough.

I came home and we got a surprise visit from Brie and Chris, Yay lucky us.

Now I'll be going to bed to get some much needed rest.

WHEW

Well,... the progressive dinner went great. It's an annual event we do with Rick's side of the family. Sadly, Brice, Ryan and Chris were unable to be there, so Brianna, Gavin, Jill and Kellie had to fill the "kids table" as best they could :) My part of the dinner is the main course. As tradition has it, I made my Wild rice soup once again and we had sub sandwiches. All was yummy.

We hung out at Rick's brothers house till midnight, time fly's when your having fun. It was so pretty coming home in the freshly fallen snow.....so lovely

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Cookie Exchange


This afternoon, I got together with some friends from work to have a cookie exchange, I got lot's of yummy cookies. It was fun to hang out and chit-chat away from work.

So the weekend was a busy one with 2 christmas parties and a cookie exchange, So much fun squished into 3 days....whew . Now I'm hoping I can settle down and get some shopping done, and work on my Christmas letter. I'm loving the snow, I cant believe how much we have already, Last December we had no snow so this is a real treat.

Enough for now, Everyone be safe and have a great week.

Loving the snow but not the cold. Sometimes I shiver so hard I think I'm gonna have a stroke, ha

Tonight began a busy weekend of festivities.

We had a great time at the Wadum's Christmas party, (friends from church) we had lots of yummy food and then a "white reindeer" gift exchange (which is always interesting). Rick got a Red lacey bra but traded it off for some rags for the garage....wow. I got a little frog wind chime thingy.

Tomorrow night is the Hemmer progressive dinner, I will be hosting the main course, and then Sunday is a cookie exchange with a bunch of friends from work, I'll be sure to blog the rest of my weekend fun in the near future. Hope you all have a safe and fun weekend. Stay warm.

The snow fall today was as pretty as can be.

Here's a pic of one of our lighted bushes in the front.

Christmas + Gymnastics = fun

Oh it's that time of year when everything seems to go into hyperspeed. I feel like I'm going a hundred miles an hour...most of the time. So a quick catch up with the events over the last few days

Saturday was a glorius day, snow has finally fallen and It's so pretty. The ice is even pretty when the sun shines on it in just the right way. Saturday evening Rick and I ventured out to a movie. We went to see "autumn rush" It was a nice movie (one of those feel good movies)

Sunday we had church which was lovely. Rick I and Chris headed over to the mall for a little lunch, We ended up there until almost 2pm. ( Brianna was slaving away at work) Gavin....the lucky dog was at the Vikings game with 3 of his buddies. They had seats on the Vikings 50 yd line and 5 rows up. They had a great time seeing the Vikings womp all over the Lions, HA

Rick and I went out and got the Christmas tree, we ended up with a 6.5 foot Scotch pine, it smells so lovely in the house, all pine- like. I managed to get the upstairs decorated for Christmas and will finish the basement this week. It looks so pretty.

Brianna came over after work and helped us decorate the tree. Chris came over later after work. I missed having Brice here to decorate with us, Sigh..... We called him while decorating so he could kind of be a part of it with us.

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Brianna also displayed a bit of her Gymnastic ability for a little intermission time after decorating the tree

Today I went to the cities with my mom for her appointment. While there, I got a call from Brice as he was walking home from class. He was surprised that we were in the cities and since he had a nice long break til his next class we planned for a lunch together. We ended up at "Noodles" , it was good to hug "my boy" and spend a little time with him after missing him sooooooo much yesterday...I think it was a God thing, God knew just what I needed and there it was.

Tonight Rick and I both were craving "Carlos O'Kelly's" so we made our way there for supper, it was very yummy. Tomorrow I work, then off on Wed & Thurs. Got a bunch to do on those 2 days, it's all good. Some day soon I will need to start my Christmas shopping and get my cards out......hummmmmm