Christmas

Christmas morning was pretty quiet here. Adam woke up early but wasn't real excited about opening his gifts from Santa or his stocking, he could just pretend. We always get our picture taken before going to Gayle's but my boys really would rather skip it, they still humor me but when I run back to get into the picture they do something silly, drives me crazy!! This is the best we got this year.

Here's my dad relaxing in the Christmas chair.

Adam and Uncle Brad have a very special relationship.... when the first snowflake falls to the ground Adam is bugging Brad to open the trails. This is his attempt to talk Brad into opening them up by Friday night. When Adam was in grade school he called Brad to ask if he would open the trails and Brad asked Adam if he thought they were ready and then he said "okay if your sure I'll open them up tomorrow". Adam was so proud that he opened the trails, he told all the kids at school that he did it and listened to the radio just to see if Brad mentioned his name. Good thing Brad has a sense of humor with Adam because he can be somewhat of a pest.

This is Whoville. We all eat in the garage, Lynn calls it cafeteria style like in school. We have 5 pans of lasagna, 1 ham, cheesy hashbrown potoes x5, lots of salads and tons of deserts. Gayle goes through a ton of work for this day and we all appreciate it. This is the right side of the garage.

And here's the left side. This year there were 43 of us... there are 16 missing.... don't quote me on these numbers I may have missed someone.

Troy even made it from Iraq... we had a live feed for awhile.

Here are the brothers... missing 2. All the boys live right here in the area and they are never all together for a picture. Dad, Wally, Brian, Rusty and Randy

It seems this post is all about the boys so here's Garrett with his new hat made by Aunt Peggy. It's Alpaca fur, hair, fuzz.... whatever they grow. These are the warmest hats ever and so cute.

Christmas was great and ended with a bit of a snow storm. Here is John using his polish snow blower on the patio.

There was too much snow that he had to start a trucking company to haul the rest of it away.

Cookie Baking

Here's a couple more pictures from our cookie baking day.

The rule is - if a cookie is broken you must eat it.... how many times do you think they break on purpose?

Miss El concentrating on her decorating skills. She likes the decorating tubes and this year actually knew how to use them.

The cinnamon rolls before the rising... I think at this point I can freeze them but I'm not sure yet. I have never made anything with yeast so this was all new to me. When I was growing up mom made 16 loaves of bread a week.... what I wouldn't do for a piece of boughten sliced bread. Call me crazy but bread was our filler and mom never, I mean never let us help make the bread. She said with the yeast and that many loaves of bread to mess up, she needed to do it. Scared me right out of trying anything with yeast, until today.

School is creating a monster

Elly is in Kindergarten and she's becoming a spelling, reading, letter writing monster. She has never liked toys... ever, her passion has always been having someone read to her, color with a number 2 pencil, learn new letters, count, and count again and again..... Well now since she is learning how to read it's become worse. She reminds me so much of her mother when she was little. All Shan wanted to do was read and learn and it all came so easily for her. Elly is the same way, here she is trying to find something to do on Friday before we go see the lights. She doesn't have a clue what to do with herself unless it involves paper and pencils. She also has the same hair as her mother.... thick and long.

Grandma do you wanna write me a letter so I can copy it? Grandma do you wanna watch me read my Candy Cane Book I made at school? Grandma do you wanna draw me a picture so I can cut it out? Grandma do you wanna count the carpet fibers with me?

Here's the letter I wrote her..... I didn't know she would want me to read it over and over again until she knew all the words. Then she wanted to write it all on another sheet of paper. In this picture she is showing it to Adam and having him read it to her.... she gets to read the words she knows.... and she lets him know which ones she can read.

Adam and Elly reading her letter.... Adam eats this time up but why does she have to like reading????? this is his least favorite thing.

Now she talked Adam into reading her the paper, she points to all the words she knows while he skims for the good stuff.

"Oh Grandma please can I have a cup of hot chocolate, you haven't made me one in a hundred years. And I'll have it in a snowman cup since it is winter"

She's spending the night so we'll do this all over again in the morning.