Mug Shots and Race Cars!

Okay, back to the blog.

We've had a few extremely busy-- but fun packed days.

Let me try to get caught up by starting with Christmas Eve.

One of my favorite traditions, is we all get together for a feast 

of nothing but appetizers and desserts.

Since we always do a huge dinner on Christmas Day... we gotta do 

something different and I love this!

 We also, always have the kids act out the Christmas Pageant.

It always leans a little more toward the entertainment side than the spiritual side.

But what do you expect with Byron always, always acting as the donkey.

Notice I used the word donkey instead of that other word that probably

came to your mind-- naw, never!

 Reese somehow beat out the competition to play Mary

and now that Kean has outgrown the Baby Jesus role, we used a doll.

Which was the smartest thing we could do-- since the boy

is not the most cooperative.  He and Elly were supposed to be

the Shepherds...

 Instead Kean muscled his way into the center of the Wisemen.

I think he liked their shiny baubles...

 The children also always get new pajamas from Grammy and Grandpa.

We all decided Kean's made him look like he was wearing a

penal institution issued jumpsuit.

Of course, when he grabbed the lid to the Christmas Pageant costumes--

we thought the outfit was complete!

 The best part of the night came when Grammy and Grandpa gave Kean

his gift from them.

The kids all went on a scavenger hunt that led them to the master bath--

where this was waiting!!!

I'm not sure who was more thrilled-- Keanut or all the cousins and his sisters!

I'd love to know what was going on in his mind.

He seemed in awe but also a little awe-struck.

He spent most of the night admiring the stickers, the hood and the wheels--

but wanted nothing to do with getting behind the wheel and going.

 Give him some time.
By summer, I'm guessing he'll be running down Reese on the lawn.

Spring Break

The girls are out of school all this week and of course it's rainy every day.

My mom watched Keanut on Saturday for us... so we drove up to the mountains

and snowmobiled 23 miles into some hot springs with our friends, the Cook's.

Bergdorf is nestled in the trees and like stepping back in time.

The buildings are probably circa 1940's.  The bathrooms?  Outhouses.

There was a wood stove in the changing room- thank heavens.

But it was fabulous.

 The water was like a toasty bath

And the kids had to cool off every little while.

We did this a few years ago and had hoped to make it a yearly tradition.

I think we are back on track for that.

It was a great day.



A Lot Of Christmas Cheer

One of our family's very favorite Christmas traditions is attending our

good friend Mary K's annual holiday par-tee.

This is her nephew Mason holding the Keanster.

Mason is a mere 6 foot 7.

Kean comes in at around 2 feet.



 The party is mostly adults... but a handful of kids are invited--- obviously ours.

 And every year, Mary K (below in the corner in the white)

brings in entertainment for the party.  One year, she had a couple of actors from

the Shakespeare Festival, another year it was a magician, another-- a comedian.

Somehow or other, our girls have always kicked off the evening with a few Christmas Carols.

This year, they sang Up On the Rooftop and Christmas Bells Are Ringing.

Reese stole the show with a bit of a solo.

The girls are pretty brave.  There's probably about 150 people at these parties.

This year Mary K's college aged son and his buddies got up after the girls

to do their own caroling.

Let's just say they'd been nipping a bit at the bar and had no qualms about getting

up and belting it out at the top of their lungs.

Too bad I didn't take video so you too could listen in.  It was funny stuff.

Interpret that as they were awful.

 The hired entertainment this year was three personality packed singers

with some great pipes.

This was their Santa Baby rendition.

 On top of the always fun entertainment and the killer food--

some of our dearest friends in the world are always there:

here's Reese with Foad and Susan

And Kean with Ali and Joannah (Joannah happens to also be Greer's 3rd grade teacher).

Plus, I get to hang with the most handsome guy at the party.



Oh Christmas Tree

I know I'm way outdated with this post-- but be patient.

This is the closest I'll ever come to a journal.

In early December, the Moomey's took Kean for the day and

Byron and I took the girls up into the mountains to hunt down a Christmas Tree.

 While we were expecting it to be cold, we weren't expecting much snow.

 Wrongola.
We should've brought the snowmobiles instead of the four wheelers.

Holland insisted she was a better driver on the snow than me...

so Reese and I piled on behind Byron and H took Greer.

(She is a good little driver, by the way).

 We found two lovely trees (one for us, one for my folks)

and had great fun.

Love Idaho... and love the fact that the snow stays up in the mountains

most of the time and not on the roads where I live.

A Lesson In Giving

Okay, so this is why I get so darn stressed every Christmas season-- but it is fully worth every ounce of added tension.

My friends and I, each year, "adopt" Refugee families.

This year, we scaled down and only took on 20 families-- but still a huge undertaking.

Just getting the boxes, bikes and goodies (and our own families) loaded into cars takes a miracle.

 Channel 2 showed up to give some air time to these families in need-- the forgotten segment of society.

 This little boy from Iraq got just what he wanted-- thanks to the generosity of one of my friends.  Her family

and all of her in-laws adopted this little family and gave them more than they even asked for.

 This is my core group of friends - we've been doing this for about 8 years.

We call ourselves the "ELFs"-- the Eternal League of Friends and we recruit

our other friends and relatives to help us help others.

 Perfect example:  here's my friend, April and her four children who

adopted this little family from Burhma.  We all got involved in this

project first, for the need of those we help and secondly, to teach our

children that Christmas is really about giving and not getting.

 So here are my children giving.....

 We had part of this family from Nepal/Bhutan-- the boy in the plaid shirt is Chandra.

He is 17.  And that is his little sister, Mengala who is 14.  Chandra spoke excellent English

and we all were quite charmed by them.

Many years in the past, we've had families who did not speak more than a few

words of English.  Yet, somehow, we had no problem communicating or

understanding when it came time to say goodbye and they said thank you!

Our children love, love, love this tradition.

You know we had to work off that turkey so the day after, we traipsed up to the mountains

for a little frolicking in the snow.

 That's Greer driving the four runner... pulling several of my cousins' kids.

 Reesey shadowed my two nieces around. 

She calls them her "snuggle buddies".

 The "keeper"shot of the day is this one.

That's my 93... yup, you read that right... 93 year old grandmother with my

mom and cousin on a four wheeler.

I wanna be just like her when I grow up!

 And finally, here's my cutie pie husband racing around with Reese.

I sat by the fire most of the afternoon holding a sleeping Kean.

But I had a blast watching my children have a blast.



Christmas Eve

As requested, here's a picture of the ol' girl on her two feet again.  She looks great at a distance.

 And I couldn't resist showing a picture of what the girls helped me make.  The critics say they were as yummy as they were cute.

 On Christmas Eve, we had our traditional gathering with in place of dinner-- all appetizers and desserts-- one of my favorite meals of the year.  We also attempted (and it always turns out really irreverent) our version of the Christmas Story.  Aunt Dana read from the Bible, while Holland-- acting as a donkey carried in Reese/Mary, with Morgan/Joseph at her side.  That's Ken and Nedra (Dana's parents) on the couch.

 Baby Kean was a somewhat cooperative Baby Jesus.

 Greer and Katie were our Angels again.  With Derek our lone Shepherd and Lindsey as the single Wise Lady.

 The Moomey's served as part one of the audience.

 With the Bodily's acting as part 2.

 When the stage production was over, the kids opened up their traditional Christmas Eve pajamas from Grammy (my mom).  This year she brought them all shirts from Guatemala and made them pants.  Pretty cute, eh?  The pajamas and the kids.

Creativity gone amok

After the great Christmas Tree Crash of 2010, we are back on track with our holidays.  We picked up on our yearly tradition of decorating a gingerbread house (while trying to leave enough candy uneaten to actually put on the house)!

 Kean supervised from the floor.  He has taken to rolling and rolling and rolling.. well you get the idea.  (His therapist thinks he'll be crawling within a few weeks, so stay tuned).

 Voila!  The finished piece of art with some very sticky hands to show for the hard work!

 And finally, a little more art for you to stare at.  The girls showed off their handiwork with this hairstyle on Kean.  He actually had two more pony tails in the back.  Nice........