Christmas with the Sheldons

Whenever we pull the suitcases out to go on vacation, our cats begin the process of working through anxiety attacks. As soon as the luggage comes out, all three cats either try to jump in the suitcases or just plop themselves down on top of the suitcases. In the picture below, they decided to be less aggressive and just lay beside one of my bags before we left to visit Aimee's family up in North Branch, MN, and then my family in Mason City, IA.


We very much enjoyed spending Christmas at my parents' house. Both Mom and Dad still do most of the meal preparation while us kids help with setting the table and loading the dishwasher. Behind Mom in the picture below are the tupperware containers filled with all sorts of Christmas goodies that she and Dad had made before we all arrived.


My sister-in-law Di has continued her tradition of making her delicious cinnamon rolls for all of us. My niece Hannah and nephew Caleb are helping her pound the dough in the picture below.


One of the many things I enjoy about when the whole family gets together is eating every lunch and supper together. The dining room we are eating in used to be the dining room and the kitchen before my parents added a new larger kitchen and a spare bedroom onto their house several years ago. Also of note, I can't help but talk about the man praying in the picture above Aimee. As I was growing up, I thought this guy's name was Grace Enstrom. However, I learned sometime when I was in high school or college that the name of the picture is called "Grace" and that it was painted by someone with the last name of Enstrom. Yes, I am a bit of a slow learner!


As many of you know, games are a part of every Sheldon family get together; and Christmas is definitely not an exception. I think my Dad, my brother Chris, my brother Brad, and I were playing pinochle in the picture below (although it looks like Chris may need to go back to the "special" kids' home!).


Hannah and Caleb have also tried their hand at playing cards, and I'm sure it will only be a couple of more years before they are taught how to play pinochle.


Before we open presents every year, we read through the Christmas story found in Luke. We each read one paragraph and pass the Bible to the next person. After that, we sang Mom's favorite Christmas carol (Silent Night) this year and then began handing out the stockings and then opening presents.


I think Hannah is looking for gold in her stocking in the picture below!

Since I was the youngest in the family growing up, I was always the one who got picked to play Santa (dig the presents out from under the tree and hand them to each person). My family opens presents in rounds. After each person has a present to unwrap, everyone unwraps at once and then we go around and show everyone what we received. And this continues one round at a time until all of the presents are unwrapped. This year, Hannah and Caleb helped me pass out the presents. You may have to look closely in the picture below as Caleb is digging under the tree for some presents all of the way back against the wall.

My Dad and his brothers and sisters had one gag gift that got passed from one person to the next every year at Christmas. That tradition has now carried over to our family in the form of a green clay mouse that my Dad made in elementary school. He was going to try to give the mouse to me this year, but my brother Brad caught wind of this and had been planning since last Christmas (when he gave the mouse to Dad) to make Dad get the mouse two years in a row. So, once he found out that Dad was going to give me the mouse again, we unwrapped it on Christmas Eve after he had gone to bed and rewrapped it and addressed it to him for him to open on Christmas morning. As you can see in the picture below, he got quite a kick out of it!

Chris and Di's youngest, Elijah, enjoyed his first Christmas and is opening his present from Aimee and me in the picture below.

Aimee and I enjoyed spending Christmas with both families again this year, and we hope that you and your families had memorable Christmases as well!

Christmas with the Rohns

Make a Smilebox slideshow

We had a good time at home with my family. We ate plenty of good food and treats and got fat, fat, fat-even Penelope. She became brave this year and started to climb up to the table and get into food on the table instead of relying on her good looks and her begging abilities.

We were blessed this year with tons of little snow storms that took place pretty much every other day. So Eric and I along with Zach and Leon went out and shoveled the driveway. After a little work, we had to have a little fun and had a snow fight. Memories! We also watched White Christmas which is a must every year with my mom.

At church, we were reminded that Christmas is not all about what is under the tree. The real meaning of Christmas is about love and mercy-God's love for his creation that he sent His Son to die on the cross for our sins so that we can be reconciled to Him. Christmas is about obedience and repentance-The obedience of Christ, Joseph, and Mary. Without their obedience to God's will, God's plan for redemption would have been lost.

Later that night, my mom, Eric, and I went to a concert at her church that featured Bob Kilpatrick (writer of Be Glorified and many other Christian worship songs) and Randy Stonehill. It was a very enjoyable evening much to my surprise. It was very moving being led in a Christmas sing-a-long with such inspired men. We pray within the hustle and bustle of this holiday season that you may take the time to reflect on the real meaning of Christmas.

Fantasy Football Update

For all those who have been watching our blog for new posts, I have an update on how fantasy football has been going for the Sheldons of Rochester. Eric participated in three leagues this year. One league that he is in is with friends from church where he came in last place and won the Toilet Bowl Trophy (a toilet seat with his name engraved on it). Another league that he is in is with his two older brothers and friends from his oldest brother Brad's church in Fort Dodge, Iowa. In this league, he found himself in the middle of the pack for most of the season but now finds himself in the playoffs. The third league that he is in is our family league where Eric just missed out on the playoffs.

Now for me. Being that this is my first time trying out fantasy football, I thought that it would be a good idea to participate in two leagues at once. I participated in our family league where I was playing for bragging rights within the family. I am now facing off with my mother-in-law for first place in this league. The other league that I am in is called Fantasy Wives. This league is pretty much made up of wives that have husbands that are in other fantasy football leagues. In this league, I found myself fighting for a position near the bottom of the league throughout the first part of the season. As the season progressed, I began winning some key games and found myself competing in the championship game. Though I lost the in the championship game (congratulations to Beth Bristol), I ended up taking second place and won some money back. Yay me! Beginner's luck? We'll find out next year.

Cookie Exchange 2008

It's that time of year again when I take part in the annual Mulvilhill Cookie Exchange. This is a tradition that I have looked forward to every year for the last five years. It's a wonderful time to fellowship with women from all stages of life. It's great to share in one another's lives and the traditions that we like to instill in our families. Similar to the previous years, we talked about the cookies that we brought with us and why we made them. This year I would like to share with you the cookies that I brought. For two weeks prior to the exchange I had been keeping my eyes and ears open for a cookie that would be the "perfect" cookie to bring to such an event. I finally decided on a new low-calorie cookie that I had never made before. I know what you are thinking, but I am all about finding and trying new low-calorie items. And this cookie was the one. So the Wednesday before the cookie exchange, I stayed up to make four dozen cookies. When all was said and done, I ended up making over 100 cookies. This should have tipped me off that something was not right about my cookies, but I just thought there would be more low-calorie cookies for me. The day of the cookie exchange, I tried one of the low-calorie treats anticipating a mouthful of yummy goodness; but instead, I ended up chewing on a mouthful of rubber. In my mind, I thought they were not too bad for only 25 calories a cookie. As the day went on, I started to get concerned about what others might think about my low-calorie cookie. What if others get upset because they brought these beautiful, delicious cookies and in exchange they get a pile of low-calorie rubber from me in exchange. Once I couldn't take the anxiety of it all anymore, I ran to Walmart after work; and with one hour to spare before the cookie exchange, I decided to make the thin mint cookie that I made the week prior with Beth. I was really impressed with my timeliness because I made four dozen thin mints and was only 15 minutes late. I also brought my low-calorie cookies along just in case anyone wanted to try a rubbery snack.

Cookies, Cookies, Cookies!

At the beginning of December, Beth invited me to join her, her sister-in-law Kathie, and her friend Nicole in a day of cookie fun. We started out enjoying a nice bowl of creamy broccoli chicken and rice soup along with bread and salad. Then we began to tackle our laundry list of holiday cookies. It was a list of four cookies. The first cookie on the list to tackle was the traditional sugar cookie.
While the dough for the sugar cookie was chillin, we decided to take on the no-bake holly wreath cookie. This was an experience!

After the no-bake holly wreath, we began to crush up the oreos and mashed in the cream cheese for the ever-yummy oreo truffles. Here is the yummy end product.

While the truffle filling was hardening, we decided to decorate the sugar cookies.

By the time we were finishing up decorating the cookies, all of our creativity was zapped (or at least mine was); and by the end, the cookies that I decorated just ended up being covered with tons of frosting. Here is a picture of my finished product of cookies.

Aren't they just beautiful!?! I am soooooooooo proud! Once we finished up decorating the sugar cookies, the last cookie that we decided to tackle was our version of the thin mint cookie. This cookie took a little bit of a steady hand and lots of patience, which by this time we were all running thin on (or at least I was).

But I must say that this was one of the easist cookies to make and one of the yummiest.

Impulse Purchase? I Think Not!

A new Shopko opened in North Branch, Minnesota, where Aimee's family lives; and so, when we were there over Thanksgiving, Aimee and I decided to check it out. We went in thinking we were just going to look at clothes and purses for Aimee and walked out with two new leather rocker recliners (along with a new purse for Aimee). Although this may seem like an impulse purchase, our current chairs have been driving me nuts for over a year as they were uncomfortable, cheaply made, and each have something broken on them. The new chairs are extremely comfortable (Othello is enjoying said comfort in one of the chairs in the picture above), have stood up to the test of the cats' back claws so far, do not allow cat hair to stick to them, and were 60% off! I couldn't pass up that deal, and so we loaded them into Aimee's car, although we had to take them out of the boxes to get them to fit into Aimee's car with our luggage from our trip.

O Christmas Tree!

Wow! The month of November really flew by...so much so that we have not taken the time to update our blog in quite some time. As many of you know, I would love to have the Christmas decorations/atmosphere in our house all year round. However, my wife (Mrs. Scrooge...just kidding!) is not of this school of thought. So, we have compromised and put our tree up sometime shortly before Thanksgiving each year. We are both big fans of the prelit fake Christmas trees (less mess) and decorate ours each year with only snowman ornaments. As I was fluffing the tree, Sandi Patty's O Holy Night spread goosebumps over my skin and brought a tear to my eye. So far, the cats have done a good job of not climbing up the tree; and hopefully that will stay the same.