Bethlehem Village

I love the lighted Christmas villages. I have several houses that you'd find in many collections, but one year I found this Bethlehem set. It's my favorite. It has six buildings, villagers and the manger scene with the three wise men.

My lights are what I find so difficult to part with when it's time to take Christmas decorations down.

Christmas Morning

This is what our living room looked like Christmas morning. So much for having a whole corner empty for our tree! Santa brought a digital piano so that Tersa and Keddi could take the lessons they have been wanting to take. Mardi got the orange bear sitting in the zebra beanbag. (She's been watching Build a Bear for two years waiting for them to release it again but they aren't going to.) The bean bag is hers too but that was from Mom & Dad. Shinara asked for the "real" guitar. And she thinks she would like lessons too. We'll see.

Anarya's First Christmas

This was Anarya's gift from Santa. She played under it while we opened our gifts. Then we took hers out, set the video camera and had her open hers alone. Unfortunately, it wasn't until we were done that we discovered that the camera had messed up and turned off. I got some pictures though.

Christmas Day football

This morning Bro. Schott sent out an invitation on facebook for any males that were interested in playing some football to come to the high school field. They were instructed to bring pads and bandages. Tersa asked why we hadn't been invited and he joked that it was because he knew we would invite ourselves. Well, they didn't have the turnout they were hoping for so the girls were invited to join in. After some convincing, Tersa took them up on it.

Perhaps this is why some girls are not invited.

Everyone's up now!

But she did run around after the ball and got the chance to run with it too.

Keddi went off by herself and played something of her own making between the track and the field. Shinara decided to run the track with Leslie Richardson. Leslie would stay with her until she tired. Leslie would circle the track and when she caught up to Shar, Shar would run with her for a while again. I couldn't believe how long she stayed out there doing this.

Look at that stride. Maybe we have a track runner in the family.

Joel, Anarya, Mardi (until a friend of hers came) and I sat on the sidelines watching. I took pictures of course. Suddenly the baby started crying and I looked at Joel questioningly. He said that when he had cheered (loudly and suddenly) she had jumped and then cried.

Daddy never raises his voice like that so Anarya was rather disturbed. It took a minute to calm her and from then until we left, she didn't enjoy our stay quite the same.

Christmas with Wilson's

Wilson's stayed home for Christmas this year. So we had our exchange earlier than usual. Between Mandy and I we probably took 20 pictures before we'd let the kids open their presents and this is the only one in which you can see each of the kids. And isn't Shinara cooperative. Well, she wasn't much better for most of the 20 pictures!! But as always we enjoyed our night with the Wilson's. We love them so much and find that as the kids get bigger and life gets more hectic, we don't spend as much time with them as we used to . So thank goodness for traditions!