Photos of Christmas week ...

Finally! I'm finding both the time and strength to post some pictures of our celebration of Christmas. Today is New Year's Day, however, so first of all ... HAPPY NEW YEAR. I'm glad we took plenty of pictures last week because without them, I would have almost no recollection of what took place around here ~ the days kind of blur together sometimes with all of the comings and goings of family.
Sabrina, Andrew, Olivia, Jackson and Karis arrived the Wednesday afternoon before Christmas. Since they don't normally see snow in Texas and we had about six inches of the white stuff here, the little kids were really excited about it. I didn't go outside with them Wednesday afternoon ~ it was TOO cold and I had only started to recover from being so sick. Grandpa Jones did take some pictures, but mostly of the backs of folk heaving snowballs at each other. Hopefully Sabrina got some better photographs of their fun in the snow. The picture above is the next morning (I thnk) when we all played a game of snakes and ladders together. The game pieces that come with it are very tiny flat colored circles ... Sabrina had the idea of using some of our larger toys as the moving pieces instead. It was fun to play this way! This game is actually a puzzle that you assemble before you can actually play the game, so it adds a bit of fun even before the game begins!
Adam, Emily and Jeremiah came over later that day and everyone played together. Jeremiah has two cousins on Emily's side of the family very similar in age to Jackson and Karis ... so he was right at home playing with "older" kiddos. He seemed to like our small Thomas the Christmas Train layout we had in the front room.
We naturally did a bit of art projects because ... it's so much fun to do with grandchildren!
Everyone was working on making Christmas cards and pictures to give as gifts ...
I had a few foam Christmas stickers that were fun to play with ...

And then before we knew it (practically), it was Christmas Eve. We attended the 5:00 worship service that night ... so beautiful. We listened to the Christmas story from the gospels, we sang tons of beautiful Christmas carols, and the little children had a special Christmas story that was read to them.

This is Karis and Jackson sitting on the platform in the front of the church looking at the monitor as the story of "Humphrey's First Christmas" was read to all of the children gathered there. Cute story too.
After the service was over, we ate a yummy dinner at Olive Garden ... such great food ...
Karis enjoyed her dinner there very much. This is such a sweet picture of her.
And I love this picture of Olivia and Andrew. She didn't know I was taking it ... so ... look at her beautiful smile!
I'm not sure which day these next few pictures are from! I think it is earlier in the day on Christmas Eve. Adam and Emily were over for awhile, but then they had plans with Emily's family for Christmas Eve.

Christmas morning was ... early! I think Olivia would have enjoyed a few more hours of sleep, but she was quite outnumbered by the little kiddos ...
... who couldn't wait to open presents!
This is Karis digging way way into her stocking to show us she had emptied the whole thing!
Olivia ... you have the sweetest face! Olivia was so pleased with everything she opened.
Karis and Jackson were SO excited during the gift opening, that they were put in charge of handing out the presents ... so as to distract them and keep them busy while waiting for their next present to open. It worked well!
Andrew received this beautiful Bocce ball set from Sabrina ...
Jackson got many and various sized sets of LEGOS ... he is a very good builder and just loves everything LEGO makes!
Karis received a "Jessie" doll that looked exactly like the Toy Story doll she is from! She is really cute and has a pull string with (I think) 30 different sayings!
Olivia made a beautiful card for her folks from the foam stickers we were working on prior to Christmas and wrote a nice long note as well.
More family came over a little later in the day on Christmas ... in time for dinner and more gift opening ...
Little Mister was all dressed up for Christmas in a darling little penguin vest ... isn't he precious? These are wonderful pictures of Adam and Jeremiah!
Since this is Dylan and Kelly's first married Christmas, Sabrina made them a special Christmas ornament ~ wasn't that sweet of her?


Jackson and Karis found a basket of some of my puppets and were behind the couch entertaining Dylan and Kelly. I love Jackson's smile as he is looking at Paco the Pig ...
This is one of the Toy Story 3 LEGO sets that Jackson received. Sabrina put a lot of the harder parts together, but Jackson is a good builder too!
Karis received a couple of BIG Melissa & Doug puzzles, which have thick sturdy pieces. This was a Safari puzzle, 4 feet long, very colorful. We all helped to put it together.
We did a bunch of art stuff during various afternoons before and after Christmas. I really liked the ladybug Sabrina drew with the help of my newest Melissa & Doug stencil sets ... Sabrina is very artistic.
Emily tried her hand with playing our Bedouin flute ... she did pretty good with it ... I've tried it for ages and all it does is screech! Can you see #12 grandchild starting to show on Emily's tummy?
I love these photos of Emily and her wee man ...
Tuesday night we had a pizza and game night and invited the whole gang. We had given Adam and Emily a LEGO game, "Creationary", for Christmas ~ it's just like "Pictionary" only you take a card and BUILD the picture until someone guesses what on earth you are trying to build! It's really a fun game. I don't think it's in regular stores yet. I found it on LEGO's website (www.lego.com). The game is labeled, "Ages 7 and up" and since Jackson is 6-1/2 and watched us playing the game for awhile and begging to play ... we had him play a couple of rounds with us! He was SO good at guessing what was being built ~ and he did very decent when it was his turn to do the building! I think he enjoyed himself hugely playing with the adults.

I have tons more photographs, but I think these give you some idea of what our Christmas was like. Last night, I did sit quietly by our beautiful Christmas tree and listened to Michael W. Smith's latest Christmas album and gave thanks again for our Lord and Savior and His great kindness in coming to earth for us. My goal is to be more like Him this year and love Him with all of my heart. I hope your New Year is filled with His many blessings!