Christmas Update

Well Christmas has come and gone at the Schmidt house. I think it is now called the "Mine, mine, mine" holiday if you had to ask Abby. For a 2 year old she brings in quite the haul from Santa, grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, and other family members. Of course she loves every present and we are thankful that we have the basement to hide her toy collection. Here's a little update from our festivities this past week.


Here is Abby helping Mommy make some molasses cookies. This is Great Grandma Papke's recipe and is a Papke family tradition to make every Christmas. As you can see we were making a little mess, and I say little because I didn't get to take any photos of her helping me roll out the cookies due to the amount of flour everywhere in the kitchen and on her. I am thankful for my cordless Shark and gets flour out in-between wooden floor pieces.



On Christmas Eve we had a new "Columbian" join our group. Lane Michael Monnig was born on Christmas Eve weighing in at 8 lbs. 11 oz and was 19-1/2 inches long. Abby enjoyed visiting him and Tim and I were reminded we would be there sooner than later and should really finish up the nursery at our house. Julie and Nick are doing great and are back home with Lane.

Here are some photos of Abby opening gifts from Santa at our house. She got some kitchen accessories to go with her kitchen from her birthday. We've been "baking" ever since.
Making cookies already.

And of course since Tim and I had a couple days off there was of course basement progress. Mostly due to my parents staying at our house Sunday night on their way down to AZ. So officially (minus the closet) the guest bedroom is back in service at Hotel Schmidt. We're very pleased with how it turned out, and have a little motivation to get the rest going I think.

One last photo of Abby with another gift from Grandma and Grandpa Papke, a harmonica. She enjoys her music and thankfully hasn't figured out how hard to blow on the harmonica to really make it work. But that day is not far off.

That wraps up our Christmas celebrations. We are very lucky to have had safe travels to all celebrations and to have received such wonderful gifts. Now it's on to a New Year's celebration with the college crew. Hopefully I'll be able to stay up to midnight!