Happy New Year!

I decided before I can move on to a new year I need to catch up last year!

So...

Here's it goes,

this picture is Christmas Eve after everyone had gone to bed and Santa Claus had come and gone.

Once again my kids must of been very, very good this year.the chair in the picture above was Brian's loot...
Christmas morning before the unwrapping had begun. We had Christmas music on the TV (in case you were wondering why the TV had to be on while we were unwrapping presents) :) On Sunday we got up and drove to Bellevue (New Castle) to spend the day with Bob's family. Everyone (except his sister and her family from Texas) was there and it was great to see them, it had been a while. We had 5 small kids and 5 young adult kids plus the adults in one house! We ate and ate and ate and the kids had a few presents to open. We spent the night at a hotel near-by and Monday my car got it's 5,000 mile service and we went to lunch with Elena and Ashleigh and mostly looked/browsed around Bellevue Square.


Christmas Eve

Here we all are by the tree before dinner. We stuck pretty close to tradition, nice dinner, short spiritual thought, games, dessert. We had fun with the Toolson's and am so thankful we had some family close by to celebrate with us.

the cousins eating dinner together (Joe was sitting at the other end of the table and didn't get in the picture here)

and last but not least I had promised a few more pictures from Katie's birthday,

here she is with some of the students she helps TA on the day before her birthday. Of course you have to have something new to wear, it doesn't show it but she had a cute new sweater on. She had a few friends over after the basketball games Friday night...

and I think (THINK) that was my last official birthday party I have to plan for a child!! I am not sad to see that come to an end...

Happy New Year everyone,

I sure hope it's a good one!