Christmas Happenings

We started out our Christmas celebrations with a school Christmas Party that we held on Wednesday, the 19th with the Pati family. There was a Christmas-themed menu, cookie decorating, a game, some piano and guitar performances, some singing, a gift exchange and other fun things. The kids had a great time! Here are some pictures from that night:

Everyone with their gift.

The Spread.

Anna playing the card toss game.

Jack playing the card toss game.

Listening to the story.

Decorating cookies.

More cookie decorating.

Luke can't decorate, but he managed to get up on the chair when we were done to do some taste testing for us.

School Christmas Party with the Pati Family

We had a wonderful time tonight with the dear Pati family for our school Christmas party. This slideshow is for Ernie, who couldn't make it because of the unexpected passing away of his mother in the Phillipines. These are mostly the Pati kids and the activities we enjoyed tonight... I'll post a more detailed one later. Thanks for partying with us, Melody, Michael, Elise and Emma!

Christmas 2007

Merry Christmas!

We'll be busy here with different Christmas events and a trip to California and visitors for a couple of weeks. We hope you have a wonderful Christmas and will be back to posting more as soon as we can. It is finally cool here (highs in the low 60's) so things are feeling more like Christmas. After a dozen years away from a white Christmas, this has actually started to feel normal!

Wierd and Cute

I am actually not sure what they were doing here... something about strong muscles that culminated in stuffing socks and pillows in their clothing.




Luke being adorable. He dances sometimes and this is one of his moves in dancing, too, but here he is just being excited.

Thanksgiving 2007

We celebrated Thanksgiving in Arizona this year with Kenny and Kathy out from CA, Derek's Dad and Sandy up from Tucson and a family friend, Matt Scott (originally from WI) also up from Tucson. Our new member was Addie-- the Johnson Family Addition. The Packers won and are a surprising 10-1 on the season. The loss of the Lions didn't seem to bother the MI fans much... I guess they're pretty used to it, right? :)

Thanks for those of you who made the drive to be with us!


Before we ate.

Addie enjoys her Thanksgiving meal.

Anna and Addie. The kids really started warming up to her in the last day or so. She is a really sweet dog and did well with the kids although that wasn't always true vice versa. But they STILL want a dog, of course.

Leah and Pictures

What is it with Leah that makes her want to be in every picture? She chases me around when I have the camera to make sure she doesn't miss the opportunity! She's cute, I'm glad to have her in the pictures! I did have to tell her to get out of them since we were out front (finally) taking Anna's 6 year old pictures and Leah wasn't allowed. Anna keeps asking when Addie will be here. The new puppy has exceeded the exitement of Kenny and Kathy coming for the kids. Now they know what it feels like to show up at a place and get totally ignored (like going home with the grandkids and Dad and Mom forgetting you exist)! Happy Thanksgiving. These are four of my favorite things that I'm thankful for...


Trying to take birthday pictures in her horse dress... a favorite, of course!

Leah sneaking in on a Luke moment.

Jack climbs the huge boulders in the front yard.

Luke has this darling squinty-eyed smile that he does intentionally when gets excited. He is so funny when Derek comes home from work... he points and smiles and squints up his eyes. He does it for other things do. This is sorta what it looks like. Of course, Leah is there, too!

Zoo Again

We decided to do an annual pass for the Phoenix Zoo. It is pretty close and a pretty good zoo, the kids really enjoy the animals and (oddly enough) the map, and Luke is getting older which allows for longer than one-hour outings without napping or eating or something. We visited on our pass for the first time a couple of weeks ago. We hit the animal show, the sleeping panther, the petting zoo and kids area, the elephants, the giraffes and a few other things. That would be the lower right quadrant of the map. Jack has decided he wants to see the wild sheep, lions and something else up at the top of the map next time we go. They also have something called Stingray Bay for a brief time and we'll hit that next visit, too. I wonder if any of them will be brave enough to touch one. Luke probably will! Luke loves animals. The neighbor cat sometimes comes for a visit in our yard, and occasionally in our back door, and Luke gets soooo excited. It is fun to see him excited but it by no means persuades me to think more highly of cats!

Derek will be gone a few days this week for work. Next week is Thanksgiving and Kenny and Kathy and Addie are driving over for the long weekend and Derek's Dad and Sandy will be up for Thanksgiving Day and The Football Game. Packers v. Lions. We'll update with more after that. Happy Thanksgiving. Is your Christmas shopping done yet?