We wish you a Merry Christmas...

Around here, we love the December Holidays, and we devote a lot of time to reading Christmas and Hannukah stories, baking treats, helping others, and learning about how God loves us. We use the Jesse tree template for reading through the Biblical stories in December and have found it enriches the holiday season for us, helping us focus on what really matters.

 Things start with the search for the perfect tree. We love AMP trees in Bradford - You can't find a bad tree there.

 Each year, we attend the light show at the U of M College of Engineering. It's created by students and rocks.

 This year, our little guy sang in the Christmas program at Park Ave. United Methodist Church. Oh, those little kidlets are so precious.

Living nativity at Crosstown Covenant Church, complete with animals, crafts and hot cocoa. We love that it was inside on such a cold night!

The best Christmas light show in the neighborhood, one block south of Minnehaha Parkway on Nokomis.

 The thing we love most about shows at Stages Theater in Hopkins is how you can always chat with the performers and snap a photo. This year, the show was Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer.

We had just enough snow for a (mostly) white hayride at Bunker Hills Stables.

The lights of Hannakuh brighten the dark nights of a Minnesota winter.

CULTURE: Hungarian for an afternoon

Because we were rowing through "Hanna's Cold Winter," I went searching for a taste of Hungarian culture in the Twin Cities, and discovered that there's not only a Minnesota Hungarian group but that they have a holiday festival. And so we signed up and went!

December 6th is a special day in Hungary. Mikulas (St. Nicholas) is coming to town on this day.
On the evening of the 5th of December children polish their boots and put them in the window. During the night, Mikulás (St. Nicholas) will come and fill their boots with candy, fruit, chocolate Mikulas figures and small gifts. That is, if they have been good! Naughty children receive a bundle of twigs, usually with a krampusz-figure attached (Krampusz: is Mikulas' helper, a mean goblin who punishes bad children). Since no child is all good or all bad, most get the bundle of twiggs and the presents.

The event started off with presentations from students in their Hungarian language program, and concluded with a visit from Mikulas, who passed out treat bags and posed for photos. Then there was a potluck, and we got to taste Hungarian food. It was great to be surrounded as much as we could with Hungarian music, language, food, and people. What a fun thing to stumble upon!

FIELD TRIP: Orchestra Hall and Macy's Santa

It's so wonderful to be able to attend child-friendly and pocket-book friendly shows at Orchestra Hall. Tickets for the Young People's Concerts are just $5 each. The conductor takes time out to explain the instruments and music, letting the kids know what to pay attention to. Plus there are dance and theatrical groups joining in to create a visual experience, as well.

This year's holiday show was Peter and the Wolf, and it was brought to life by actors from Theater de la Jeune Lune.

Young listeners will recognize the personality of each character within the music: sprightly strings for the adventurous Peter, a bassoon for his stern Grandfather, and other instruments for the bird, duck, cat, hunters and the stealthy wolf.

Since we were already downtown, the kids ran around Peavey Plaza until they got cold, and then we headed into the skyways to visit Macy's 8th Floor and Santa Claus -- a first for my kiddos.