Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

We've had a busy last several days. We made lots and lots of nuts & bolts, played with family from Portland, welcomed a missionary home, had festivities with my dad and Jim's parents, had Christmas at our house as a whole clan plus friends, enjoyed visiting with more family on Sunday after church, buried a dog, got another dog, played some more with visitors from Arizona (including bone-crunching sledding), shoveled snow, worked, rested and worked some more. I need a nap!! (My family will attest to that as I have been Sra. Grouchita lately.)

We feel very blessed to have abundance and to share some of that with family, friends and strangers this year. We hope you all have had a great holiday season and that 2010 is a fantastic and safe year for you.

Enjoy the pictures and JOY TO THE WORLD!

Many Talents

After a few delays, we (Jim) got the Christmas tree up yesterday. Yeay! Now we can stop joking about getting a Festivus pole.

I came home from work and saw the living room all decked out with garland and other decor, and of course the tree. I noticed that there were a bunch of white decorations up high all clustered together. I suggested that maybe we should spread those out more. Jim replied, "That's the angel choir!" I thought perhaps Becky had come up with that and said as much aloud. Nope. It was Jim's idea. So we have a white angel choir near the top of our tree.

"Angels we have heard up high..."

Also last night, the girls "performed" a special dance number that they worked on for at least 30 minutes before dinner. It was to the tunes of a few Christmas songs they had heard on the radio on FM 100. Unfortunately, those songs were not playing again after dinner, so they used a music CD instead. ha ha After producing our custom-made paper tickets at the "gate," Jim, Kenny, Jon and I took our seats in the family room. Then the lights dimmed and after a series of miscues, we were treated to all kinds of lip-synching, cowboy stepping, round-offs, karate kicks, and more that came dangerously close to split-open skulls. Lots of laughter by the performers and sideways glances by the audience members ensued. My favorite moment of the night took place after a costume change, when two girls in dresses (with pants underneath) joined hands and started twirling slowly... then sped up maniacally and whirled each other onto the floor! I wish I had been filming it.

We have all kinds of talents in our household.

Honesty at the Dinner Table

Last night at dinner , Alicia said she wanted to go weigh herself on our scale. She said that she had been "48 two days ago and only 41 today."

I replied, "I don't think you lost 7 pounds in one day. You would have to go to the bathroom a LOT for that to happen."

She cracked us all up with this straight-faced response: "Well, I was working on it for a very long time."