Click HERE to immerse yourself into our memories of Christmas...give yourself some time...there are 176 pictures!
(Hallie's 13th Birthday will come later in a separate album) A few pictures you will have seen before on either Mary's or Donna's blogs, and/or a few on Facebook...but it was great to relive the wonderful time we had with both sides of our family during our two weeks in Florida. The weather was incredible and we truly enjoyed feeling the warm sun on our skin. I'm sure that extra dose of Vitamin D has helped us get through the past week here in the midwest that has been so brutally cold!
There are way too many pictures to caption so I'll just mention some of our activities here (mentioned in order of how they appear in the album)...
*Christmas Sunday with family and friends, seeing familiar faces
*Domino games, cousins having a great time with each other
*Christmas Eve with the Pedersens (way too much fun)
*Christmas morning with the Esteses (the two grand-dogs tolerated each other)
*Silly string fights (Carlie not thrilled with the mess)
*Christmas dinner with BOTH sides of the family (too much laughing for good digestion)...can I just say here and now that we are very blessed to have both sides of the family very willing to "share" holidays with us so that we don't have to divide so much of our time between the two families! Our children benefit greatly from having both sets of grandparents present at most of our activities and I know they don't realize how lucky they are...it seems normal to them. We have double the fun when we're all together and we really appreciate our families being so "blended". They truly like each other and enjoy spending time as "one big happy family." Thank you everyone!
*A fabulous dinner at Maggiano's with a crazy group of people
*Too many sleepovers with cousins to count!
*Garage saleing with grandparents
*Another Sunday service where SOME of us were taking pictures and SOME of us were trying to listen
*Driving past Tiger Woods's house under construction on Jupiter Island (not a whole lot to see!)
*A quick stop at Blowing Rocks for some pictures (Carlie wasn't with us)
*Paul, Zack, and Chris at a Florida Panthers hockey game
*Zack making money by pressure washing
*Paul and Rick at the Champs Bowl in Orlando
*New Year's Eve (staying up way too late!)
*Spending the last few minutes with cousins before heading on the long trip home.
Congratulations to those of you who make it through the whole album!
Thanks again to all our family and friends who make our vacations so special by spending time with us. And thanks for the great gifts...sorry it was another "IU t-shirt year" for some of you...we'll have to come up with something more creative next year. Another HUGE thanks to the very best sister in the whole world...we turn her house and her world upside down for two weeks but she takes it all in stride and says she likes it...it's a personality trait that most do not have (including me!).
We trust that everyone is having a fantastic 2009!
