The New Year

And just so we can be up to date...

New Years day we went to Grandma Anne's house.

Here is one glimpse:

Grandma Anne playing scrabble with Jess and Brandon. Well, sort of.... 

Christmas cheer

In the interest of bring last year to a close, I put pictures from Christmas Eve at Grandma and Grandpa's house and Christmas morning together. It makes for a bit longer slide show, but at least it will be finished up!

On Christmas Eve we have always opened one gift. Once we had kids, they are the ones that get to open a gift. For the last few years, for their one gift, Jess and Brandon exchange gifts with each other. The evening was spent with family.  Food and conversation. And more presents! The night went by quickly and we had to head home. Santa can't come to our house if kids are still awake.

Christmas day was spent at home. We are lucky in the fact that our kids are not early risers. So everyone was able to sleep in a bit before going downstairs to see what Santa had brought. The living room was a crazy mess of paper and boxes, but had smiling faces all around.

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Early Christmas

We had an early Christmas with the immediate family. Daddy's younger brother (Uncle Mike) wasn't going to be able to spend Christmas eve with us, so we had a little get together. We had our gift exchange between us "kids" and the little kids recieved their gifts as well.

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I think this was also the beginning of all of us getting sick!

Christmas Dinner with Grandma Jones

We usually start our early by celebrating with the extended Jones family. We are lucky that Daddy's family all lives close by. There are so many now and it can be quite the adventure!

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Random pictures

Here are a few random pictures from December. This fills in the blanks in between the other slide shows. There are still pictures to post from Pre-Christmas, Christmas dinner, Christmas Eve, and Christmas. Let's just throw in there that 2 weekends in a row that I, unfortunately, attended funeral services for two family members. Brandon had a couple of days that he was sick and then for half of Christmas break the kids and I were all sick. Thank goodness that Daddy was on vacation! It is a rare occasion that Daddy gets to take vacation at any holiday, much less two weeks worth! Someone had to take care of us. The second week, we were all on the mend and ready to get out of the house. We tried cramming in lots of fun stuff, none of which, did we take a camera. We went to the Indiana State Museum to see the Titanic exhibit, The Children's Museum, and roller skating.

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Cub Scouts

In December, Brandon had four Cub Scout activies. They went caroling at a Senior Community and had a pizza party afterwards.  His den had a field trip to the local police station. Daddy took him to this one. We participated in the Circuit of Fun" and we went to an Indiana Ice game. Brandon recieved a special Circuit of Fun badge and was able to go out onto the ice after the game. His pack also helped with sorting and boxing for for the Project Angel food drive. When we left the warehouse, I asked Brandon if he had fun. "No, not really." I was kinda surprised by this. He usually likes being part of a group and being a helper. So I changed my line of question, "so does it make your heart feel good to help other people? Because you helped put boxes of food together, you helped to give a family dinner that they might not have for Christmas." "Yes, that makes my heart feel good." That's what I like to hear.

Caroling:

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and the Ice game:

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Family Photo Shoot

Early in December I had asked my brothers- and sisters-in-law if they would help out with putting together a Christmas gift. They were all kind enough to bear with me and participated in my little home photo shoot. We had picked an evening to get together and hoped that mom and dad wouldn't catch us! (As this was to be a gift for mom.) It was a fun and entertaining evening, to say the least! There were loads of pictures taken, all in hopes of at least 5 keepers for a picture frame I had bought. I think we ended up with some good....no, great ones. Thanks Alvin, Shannon and Ray and Mike, Rachel and Dylan for being such good sports and going along with my crazy ideas! Let me know when you want to go for round 2 :)

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This one is for Dad

I have lots of pictures to get caught up on. Something like the month of December. (And probably November if I really went back to look. But I won't.) Now that we are something close to normal- kids are back in school, daddy is back to work, no more sickies- and I now have all this free time ;) , I will work on getting caught up here.

To get started, here is the Christmas tree in Mom and Dad's back yard. Look how "Charlie Brown" cute it is!