Early Christmas in Doha and Traditions

Since we couldn't fit all of our Christmas gifts into our luggage for our trip to Finland, we opened presents at home a few days before we left.

Micah's big present of this year was a neat wooden play kitchen that includes a fridge, oven, and sink. This is perfect for her right now because she is very into pretending with food and dishes. I'm glad she has this to play with now because I was tired of her getting into the cupboard of real dishes to feed her baby.

One thing I heard about at my MOPS meeting (Mothers of Preschoolers) to keep the Christmas focus on Jesus and not the presents was to give smaller gifts at Christmas time and save the larger gifts for birthdays. I thought that was a great idea that we will be implementing next year. But for this year, we had already purchased Micah's kitchen and could only hide it in the extra bathtub for so long!

Levi seemed to enjoy his first Christmas - of course being more interested in the wrapping than the gifts. Micah had a keen interest in Levi's gifts so this year's unwrapping provided for many lessons on sharing. No, Micah, every present is not yours! To help her pass out the gifts, we made labels with our pictures on them to put on the gifts. She still loves playing with Levi's toys and is good about giving him an alternate toy to play with but she's in for a big surprise when he is not always going to be happy with that and starts to fight back for his toys! Makes me wonder what my brother went through after I came along! Ah, sweet childhood memories!

Speaking of memories...now that we have a child that is old enough to understand, I've been really focusing this year on starting new traditions and continuing old ones from my childhood with Micah and Levi. Some of the new traditions are:

• Jesus' birthday cake (red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting - only made at Christmas)
• Making homemade ornaments for the tree
• Reading the Christmas story from the Bible on Christmas (including acting it out with the Little People seen above)
• Nativity picture of our family (still to be done - check back soon for picture)
• Felt handprint cutout every year
• Smaller gifts at Christmas to focus more on Jesus (to be started next year) (Don't forget, future Beth.)

Some of the traditions from my childhood that I want to continue with Micah and Levi:

• Adding days to the felt advent calendar made by my mom. (She used to put daily activities into each pocket and my brother and I had to take turns pulling out the pieces each day and not peek into the days ahead!)
• Butter tree (Family secret as to how it is made)
• Advent candles for each "Friday" of advent ;)
• Special ornament for each child
• Making and frosting sugar cookies (James' tradition)
• I'm sure there is more that I am forgetting but this list is a start...maybe I will be able to add pictures of each tradition sometime soon...

Fun Family Finnish Frolic

Well, we're back safely from the frozen forests of Finland.  It was pretty cool.  There was tons of snow, lots of fires in the fireplace and tons of bacon and family time.  Here's the lowdown.

We took the night flight from Doha to Amsterdam and then flew to Helsinki and finally a small town about 50 miles south of the Arctic Circle called Kuusamo.  Below is the scene in Amsterdam:

This wasn't them looking out at the planes but the two of them being arrested for not sleeping on the flight from Doha to Amsterdam.  I just sat and watched.

The Helsinki airport has these cutouts in a couple of places.  Looks like Santa needs taller elves.

The next day, it was time to go outside and play.  It only took about a half hour to get everybody all suited up.  Who knew a family from Doha would have so much winter wear.

 

We took a little walk (trudge) down toward the lake and quickly realized the snow was about 2 feet deep off of the trail.

Here is a view of the front of the cabin.  It was pretty cool.  All log construction, fireplace inside and two bedrooms.  The shower is not connected to the main cabin though so it was a bit of a scamper each morning.

There was a bit of a snow load on the roof when we arrived too.  It continued to snow 1-2 inches each day we stayed.

Beth looks pretty good against the snowy backdrop.

umm, can you get the snow out of my pants while I keep playing?  Just a bit later, plastic surgery on Beth's snowman gets a little gruesome.

We found the sled and started going down the driveway with it.  Micah loved it!

The highchair they provided for Levi was really cool.  You could put it on its back and it doubled as a toy boat that Micah loved to rock in. 

Here is the Christmas tree they provided.  Not sure if they cut it down themselves or where it came from but it is a pretty neat little tree.

The cabin had a pretty small kitchen (big enough though) and the fireplace was used a bunch. 

One of the favorite activities for the kids ended up being just plain wrestling.  It didn't matter with who, Micah & Levi, Levi & Beth, didn't matter.  Here though we depict one scene of wrestling:

Levi is playing with the Little People nativity scene.

Micah decides she wants to play too, a little rougher.

 

Now a lot rougher.

We made ornaments with crafty things to hang on the tree.  Here is one of the doves.

We looked forward to this trip because it would give us an opportunity to eat bacon.  Then, somebody stole the last two pieces at breakfast!  Obviously her mother's child.

We took a drive each day just to get out of the cabin and look around some.  It was really pretty out there.  We'd never seen so much snow cover that was so deep.

Levi's coat has cute little bear ears on it.  He gets so snuggled in with that car seat and generally goes right to sleep.

Beth goes into an information place to find out what we can do.

We made sled ornaments out of popsicle sticks.

We did finally walk through the thigh-high snow to the cross-country skiing path around the lake.  It was snowing pretty good at that time. 

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"Dear Lord, please let this sled stay together despite my obvious exceeding of the maximum weight (they should have listed the max weight in pounds, not kilograms)."

  

We think Levi is in there somewhere, hard to tell though.  He didn't like the snow too much, the suit didn't let him crawl much so he ended up with a few facefuls of snow before we decided to put an end to it.

 

Another shot of the Christmas tree with more ornaments on it.  Can you spot the doves and sleds?

The last ornament we made were popsicle stick snowflakes decorated with buttons!  Oh, what fun crafting.

Later that evening, during a bit of wrestling, Levi contemplates giving Beth mouth-to-mouth but in the end, he decided just to drool directly into her mouth.  Yuck. 

On Christmas Eve, we took a drive around to see the place, it was the brightest day we'd seen there.  This picture is at about 10:30 in the morning, just after sunrise.

We also saw a couple of "wild" reindeer walking along the road.  Did you know they are white sometimes? 

For Christmas Eve dinner, we went to a local restaurant for what we thought would be a nice fixed menu of reindeer and bear.  But, it was actually really good turkey buffet.  The Finnish seem to have something for buffets.  Micah and Levi had fun and got to eat some peas too.

We all had a great Christmas Day.  This year, Micah really seems to be catching on to the idea that Christmas is Jesus' birthday.  We've started a new tradition of making a birthday cake for Jesus - red velvet with cream cheese frosting!  We also brought our stockings to open Christmas morning.  We opened the rest of our gifts a couple days before we left for Finland (post coming soon...)

Christmas Day fun...

 

View of the frozen lake behind our cabin

 

On our last day in Finland, we decided to drive a couple hours to Ranua to visit the zoo.  It was very neat seeing all the Arctic animals.  They even provided sleds to pull the kids in.  Micah was lucky enough to get a reindeer fur to wrap around her.  She actually preferred pulling the sled with the backpack in it though.

Right about the time we made it to the back of the zoo where the polar bears are, the sun was at its highest point of the day.  The picture was taken at 11:47 am!