Happy holidays!

I sometimes procrastinate on getting to the blog because there is so much I could write about. Should I blog on what is going on lately with parenting? Kids? Marriage? Recipes for winter grilling? Renovating our old house? Our pets? I find our lives interesting enough to blog endlessly on any of these topics, choosing one area at a time is hard! I'd like to write like I talk! But the writing requires me to sit down for a while and that can be more difficult than settling on a topic.

This time it's easy, Christmas.


We tell ourselves we have a tradition of putting up our artificial tree the weekend after Thanksgiving. Whether that has ever really happened, I can't recall. This year we were a week late. Since we moved to this house in June, many things are still boxed in the basement; kids toys, kitchen stuff and seasonal stuff. We found the tree easily, and some of our holiday decor, but the box with the lights took us awhile. By the time we were ready to string the lights and add the ornaments, our three cats had removed about a third of the limbs. We put the tree back together and finished the decorating. Since then our wild cats have been playing and sleeping in the tree. Now we enjoy the family fun of decorating our tree almost everyday.

With the tree up and over a foot of snow on the ground, "it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas". The hill that wasn't much fun for Dad to mow has turned out to be so much fun to sled down. It is a good thing that we live where we do, the sledding season is much longer than the mowing season! The first week of good snow the Freund kids went sledding everyday, for hours. We have had a friend or two over and we look forward to sledding parties in the future.



We have a family tradition of going to Mall of America to see Santa. For the last 5 years the photo with Santa has been our Christmas card. I did not get cards out this year but our 2008 photo is the one that you used to see at the top. We now live an extra hour away from MOA. Despite that and the the cold weather we made the trip. I was a little afraid of going on the weekend or an evening. MOA at Christmas time can be so crazy. Two years ago we had a two hours wait to see Santa. So, shhhhh. . . I took the kids out of school on a Friday on which they had only a half day anyhow (teacher in service).



Because our trip was on a Friday, Dad was working but we took some good friends, Vera and Christina. We met Vera, Michal, and their daughter Christina through soccer last fall. Christina and #1 were on the same team. Our girls became friends and so did we. In the last few months we have spent a lot of time together and had lots of fun. Their family is here for just one year, from The Czech Republic, for Michal's job, and sadly they will be leaving this spring. Michal is a doctor of veterinary medicine. Vera is a experienced dog trainer. It is so cool to be friends with a vet and a trainer and get all kinds of pet advice! We also were very lucky to have had their family watch our animals while we were gone. Who wouldn't be comfortable with that?! Now we just need to find that pediatrician baby sitter . . .




Back to MOA. We got there early and only had a 10 minute wait for Santa. We were there for 12 hours and only went into a few stores (LEGOland, American Girl, Disney and Nickelodeon). Of course we did some window shopping and people watching, ate at the Rainforest Cafe and the kids went on rides all day. It was so fun! For the grownups, too! We practically had the place to ourselves. I can guess it's the economy. We had no waiting at the restaurant and the kids would get off a ride, come out the exit and run right back to the front of the line to ride again. On a Friday night two weeks before Christmas! Very sad. I have never seen the MOA so quiet.

Here are some more photos