Exciting News and Christmas Fun!

With the craziness of the holidays, I've been slacking at keeping up with my blog. And if you think it's bad now, just wait. Pretty soon I'm not going to have much free time at all because...

...drum roll please...

I'm going back to school!

I'm about to start a program that will lead to a Master's degree in Special Education. I'm very excited, but it's going to be a lot of work. However, I will still attempt to continue updating you all on what's going on in our lives. We may just have fewer exciting things to report!

But anyway...

We hope you all had a fantastic holiday season. The last few weeks for us have been filled with family, food, and fun. While I'm glad things are getting back to normal, we certainly had a very nice holiday.

The last few days before Christmas were a blur of baking, crafting, and wrapping. I was a little behind on things this year, so the stress levels were up. I went a little crazy with the baked goodies, and I spent a lot time hand-making our Christmas cards. I've really gotten into the paper-crafting thing this year, and it was a lot of fun.

A few of my awesome cards.

I think I'll start making cards for next year now. I was a little rushed to get them finished and in the mail!

When Christmas Eve finally arrived, I was excited to just relax and have fun. My family has always gathered and opened presents on Christmas Eve, so we headed over to my folks' house to a fun chili and taco dinner.

The Krauses always end up gathered around the piano singing carols at Christmas.

After dinner, we settled down for the present craziness. This year we did something completely different with gifts. It was pretty confusing and would take way to long to explain fully, but basically, each person received only one gift from the whole family, and that gift was bigger than anything one would typically purchase for his- or herself. Because of this crazy new way of doing things, I got a Cricut!

If you don't know what a Cricut is, it's a fantastic machine that will make all of my paper-crafting so much easier and more fun. I'm sure you will see a lot of my new baby in the future. (You can't wait, can you?)

Presents went much more quickly this year, with only one gift for each person.

My mom had a little too much fun wrapping Matt's gift. He had to open three boxes before he found his new Xbox.

Then the kiddos got to get to their gifts.

Evie loved the new rocking horse my folks' got her.

And she wouldn't take off her cute sweater from me and Matt.

On Christmas Day, we headed back to my parents' house for a really nice dinner.

Yay Christmas!

My mom made a delicious meal (with a little help from me!).

Dinner.

Somehow, all the grown-ups ended up at the kids' table. Oh, well!

The rest of the afternoon was spent just relaxing with family.

Nieces in the awesome hats I got them!

Pretty Christmas baby. I don't think she cared much for the headband. But I guess I wouldn't either.

She loved the spiced whipped cream I made, though. And I did, too.

Bright and early the next morning, we got on the road to Kansas! Shortly later, we turned around and headed back home! Sadly the snow and cold closed I-70, and we were stuck in Denver. But you gotta love that Colorado sun, because by mid-afternoon, the roads had melted and were open again. The blowing snow messed with our visibility a little bit and there were still a few slick spots, but at least we got out to Hutchinson on Saturday. Much later than we'd planned, but we made it.

A little blowing snow. It wasn't too bad.

Tarr Christmas in Hutch was short and sweet. We visited with Matt's family, opened presents, ate yummy food, and headed out.

Chillin' (like a villain).

Dinner at Uncle Kenny and Aunt Brenda's beautiful, newly remodeled home.

The girls reading. I love reading.

So excited at what might be in her gift bag!

Our final stop on our Christmas adventure was my grandparents' house. I don't have any pictures because we spent most of the time just sitting and chatting, but it was a great visit. I talked crafts with my aunt and heard stories from my grandpa's childhood. It's always great to see them all, and I wish we could do it more often.

So, Christmas is over. It was a nice holiday, but I'm ready to move on to other things! Like lots of reading and essays and projects...