Christmas Memories

Christmas was special this year with all my children home and none of them waiting for us in a foreign country. What a blessing this year was with our two 5 year olds and our 2 babies! Then my babies sister and little brother came over with my parents. It was a fun-filled, peaceful day.





Aaron with Uncle Joel.


Kya & Autumn with Grandpa & Aunt Hope.

Christmas Eve 2008

Since moving here, we have these dear friends that we have adopted in our hearts as family and we love spending Christmas Eve with them. This year Krista and the girls all made reindeer food and then ran outside (even in pj's) to throw the reindeer food in the grass, to give the reindeer plenty of energy to keep going through the night.



Krista always makes a wonderful dinner and Zha Zha does a fantastic dish (Dale's Fave!), of breadcrumb pasta. We LOVE their cooking.



Krista always puts a lot of work into holidays and cooking. She is wonderful at it. Here is her annual homemade birthday cake for Jesus.



After saying goodnight to our friends, Dale and I finished putting the gifts around the tree....All set for Christmas Morning!

Pre-Christmas Celebration

For our Pre-Christmas Celebration, we like to go to "Celebration", Florida. Since it never snows in Florida, Celebration does a great job of creating a Florida-style Winter Wonderland. They shut down Market St and have snow (aka soap bubbles!) blowing in every hour. We love to sit outside at the pizza parlor while the kids go back and forth playing in the snow. The girls were so excited to be going back this year. The funny thing is, is as soon as Autumn hits Market St with the snow, she decides she doesn't like it. But she is excited before and after. We love to walk around, get a snack & coffee or cocoa afterwards and ride the sweet little train they have pulled by a golf cart.



Afterwards this year, we went back to the hotel and sat around the fire pit. The next morning we woke up to these beautiful hot air balloons out our window.

The Tree & The Elf

Decorating the Tree with 5 year olds is so much fun. I think they did a great job & the babies were thrilled with the tree when they woke up from their nap.



Later in the day, we found an elf in the house...I heard one comes with every tree. :-)