I just LOVE this little family of mine. They fill my heart to the brim and then some.

Our Nativity

We drove up to Sean's parents in Casa Grande for Christmas (I liked the 5 hour drive we used to have much better than the 10 we now have....but the kiddos were pretty good). We rolled in at about 2 AM on the 23rd and stayed until Sunday morning (the 27th). Caelan and Ben and Megan have been playing with our little plastic Nativity set all month. On a couple of occasions they wanted to be the characters ("I'll be Mary," and "I want to be the Shepherd," etc). I mentioned something about acting out the Nativity story, and they just thought that was the greatest idea. Ben talked about it several times from that moment until Christmas Eve. So, we decided it would be fun to have all the little kids play the different parts in the Nativity. We were with all of Sean's family as well as his Grandma Dick and Uncle Garry and Aunt Jera. Jenny and I and Sean's mom pulled together some costumes and the kids acted out our very BRIEF version of the Nativity....and loved it. Caelan played Mary, Ben and Logan played the Wisemen, Megan and Hailey were Angels, Corbin was a Shepherd, Brooklyn was the Star, and Nathy was supposed to be Joseph (but he pretty much wouldn't cooperate at all). It turned out really cute - I think we might start making this a regular Christmas Eve tradition.

Cindy Lou Who

In honor of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" here is our very own Cindy Lou Who.

YUM!!

Making treats at Christmas. Fun..and delicious!

Everybody Smile

Each year we try to take a simple family snapshot to put on our family newsletter. Nothing fancy or professional (in fact we just use the timer on our camera at home usually), and yet every year we take probably 30-50 shots trying to get one....JUST ONE picture with all of us looking forward and looking somewhat happy. We never get a "perfect one," but we sure get some comical ones in the process. Here are some of the gems from this years attempt.

Nathy - we're not that scary....


Meg - the camera is over here....


Oh Ben - he was the highlight of the "funny pictures" this year. Man, he had a bunch of them...


We're getting cheesier...


And...we're done..

Here are some other pretty cute ones.

Dick Holiday Newsletter

I've emailed this to those who I could find addresses for, but here is our family newsletter for 2009. (If you click on the image it will enlarge to something large enough to actually read....HE HE HE).
Merry Christmas!