Christmas

We had a very nice Christmas this year. I don't have any pictures b'c the wrong camera card was in the camera and we can't get the pics off that card. Wed. evening we had a Christmas Eve service at the church. We had around 50 for that. It went pretty good. The church in Fredonia sent out gifts so we were able to pass out some gifts then.

We were going to go to our house to open our gifts after church, but we were invited to someone's house after church so they could give our kids some things. Well, it was 9:45 when we left there. My mom's church had sent out gifts for our kids and for another family in the church. We decided to open the gifts from Scott's family and the ones from Blue Knob on Christmas eve. Then on Christmas morning, the kids could open the gifts from us. The kids had A LOT of fun. (I wish I had pictures :(. )

Donald and Rachel came over around 1 and we had lunch with them. We played games until about 6:30 or so then they left. After that, we delivered the gifts from Blue Knob to the other kids. It was fun watching them open them ;).

Computer Crash!!!

I hope we have a learned a lesson out of the computer happenings of the last couple weeks. While Dad was here, we did some work on the computer and ended up losing all my pictures. There was a chance we were going to be able to take it to someone and have them find them for us. Well, as of last night, that won't be happening. My computer crashed last night and we had to redo everything....once again we lost quite a few pictures. Thankfully I have the few that are on the blog already, but I don't have the ones of us opening our presents with Mom and Dad b'c cause I hadn't loaded them on here. Hopefully we will have learned to backup our pics one way or another!!!!!

Open House

We had what is going to be our annual Christmas open house. I used to made up trays like my mom did (except the cookies don't look near as nice as hers) and give them out at Christmas time. Then Scott came up with the idea of having an open house. We did it one year and it was nice, but not a whole lot of people showed up. A friend of mine came and brought all the siblings she had to babysit and that made things loud. Well, we didn't do it the next year but we have done it the last two years and it has worked out pretty good. The only problem is, I made enough cookies to pass out cookies to everyone instead of just making enough for the evening. I have 11 one gallon ziploc bags of cookies left over....enough for 2 more open houses. I'm going to give plates of cookies to some of the ones that didn't come and that will help get rid of some of them. Otherwise, the next picture anyone sees of me will be quite large ;)

I think I was able to get pictures of everyone that came over.

Kori

Shylah

Miss Stedronsky....our neighbor

Patricia Troyer (and Garrett) David Troyer
Ray, Charlotte and Esther Meador
Titus MarksHis wife, Bertha Berta (Bertha's twin sister and Kori and Shylah's Grandma)Moe and Mary Jo Parker

(Scott forgot to send out my Christmas cards so some of them were hand delivered and we had to call a few people and let them know about. Moe and his wife, Mary Jo were invited about 2 hours before it started. I really didn't expect them to come since it was short notice. Well, I thought wrong!!! After Mary Jo was done at the school, they came over!!)

As you can tell, there wasn't very many there, but we had a good time visiting with the ones that did!!!!

New Look

I let Garrett pick my blog background. If you keep the writing in the black, you can read it okay :) Kids are so much fun ;)

Mimi

Mom and Donavan raking leaves
Mom, Donavan and Garrett

Mom talking to Donald and playing with Donavan

Yes, they made her chase the ball across the road

Mom waiting for Donavan to send the ball her way

Here are some pictures of Mom enjoying her time here. Garrett decided he wanted to be nice and rake the neighbor lady's yard. He raked for about 10 minutes or so and came in and said he was too tired. I told him he really should finish what he started and Mom offered to keep him company while he worked. Little did she know she would spend the next 2 hours raking leaves and putting them in trash bags :) Donavan and Antonia decided to join in the fun too.

The other pictures are of her and Donavan playing ball. Donavan finally convinced her to go outside (it was kinda chilly) and they played until it got too dark.

My kids are still wishing Mimi was out here and I'll have to admit, their mom sometimes wishes she was still out here too:)

My roses!!!

These are the flowers Scott got me in November. This is one of the few times I have been able to keep roses for a long time. These were very pretty. I told Mom he got them for me and of course her first response was, "What did he do?"

Supper at Donald and Rachel's

Donavan "playing" Donald's guitar

Donavan and a puppy

Mom helping Rachel while I took pictures

(sounds like a nice arrangement to me :))

I even got a picture of Scott holding one of the dogs!!!











My sister-in-law, Rachel

These are a few pictures from when Donald and Rachel had us all up for supper. We were supposed to eat at 7:00. Mom, Dad and the 3 older kids went up early so Mom and Dad would have time to visit with Donald and Rachel. I waited until Scott got back from hunting to go up. On the way up we hit another deer. Thankfully we hadn't fixed the car from the first time it happened and the only thing is really did was damage the hood more than it already was.

Rachel's dog had puppies and the kids loved playing with them. Charity really liked them until they started pulling on her clothes, then she wanted nothing to do with them. Garrett is our animal lover and he would have taken all 9 of the puppies home. Donald and Rachel probably would have let him too ;).

Now for the pictures!!!

Here is the one picture I got at our Thanksgiving Dinner with the church people. Charity doesn't usually go to people when I'm holding her. I was busy trying the help get last minutes stuff done and she was fussy. Agnes Jahn offered to hold her so I gave Charity to her. Thankfully Charity stayed with her for awhile. After I get some cookies made I'll put some more pics on!!!

Merry Christmas!!!

Today we had Christmas with my mom and dad. Mom, Dad, Donald and Rachel helped me wrap the gifts we had bought for tonight and also for our Christmas. Somehow, one of Garrett's gifts that he was supposed to get at Christmas was put in the pile for today. It was a camera! He has really been enjoying that gift.
Mom and Dad are leaving either tonight or tomorrow. It is 10 pm already so I'm kinda thinking they might leave tomorrow. Anyway, after they leave I will try to get some pictures on here.
Hope you all had a good day!!!