Paw's Christmas

In the afternoon it was time to go to Grammy and Pappy Paw's house for their Christmas Celebration. Everyone was there to open presents. Toddy and Quinn had fun opening up their presents.

Bobbie's Birthday.

As you all know, Bobbie's Birthday is also on Christmas. She turned 42 this year.

After we clean everything up from dinner, we celebrate Bobbie's Birthday with cake and presents for her to open. The boys wanted to help Bobbie blow out her candle on her cake and open her presents.

Christmas Dinner

Mammy outdid herself again this year and made a wonderful table full of food for our Christmas dinner.

The menu included:

• turkey
• mashed potatoes
• cream corn
• stuffing
• gravy
• crescent rolls
• cranberry sauce
  (I'm not sure if I missed anything... there was so much good food there.)

Tyler had the honors of saying the prayer at mealtime. He needed a little help from Bobbie but did very well.

As with any Christmas, we all ate too much, but we couldn't help it because the food was so good.

Christmas at Mammy and Pappy's House

Christmas day was very eventful and very busy as usual. We actually had to wake up Toddy this year to open his presents from Santa. We got him up around 9:00 am so that we could watch him open up his presents. There were plenty of presents under the tree. Some of the things that Santa brought for Toddy was Thomas the Tank set, an FP3 player (which is what he is trying out in this picture), DVDs, a portable DVD player, games, VSmile Video system, and so much more to mention. I'm not really sure if he had a favorite new present because there was so much there underneath the tree, he didn't know what to play with first.

Bobbie, Dave, Heidi, and Tyler came over around 10 am and they brought their gifts for everyone with them. We enjoyed opening up presents in the morning. Of course mom had to take a couple of breaks while opening up her presents so that she could talk to our relatives in Germany when they called.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was the usual run about to get ready for Santa Clause and the Celebration of the Birth of Jesus. Most of the day everyone had their list of things to do to get ready for the holiday.

In the morning while I was watching Tyler for Bobbie and Dave, he and I took the time to build and decorate a gingerbread house. We were both very messy by the time that we had gotten everything put together and decorated. (partially because I made the icing to put everything together a little too soft) Tyler had fun decorating everything but had more fun eating the decorations. We actually left one side of the house undecorated because we didn't have enough candy. (well I think we had enough candy but I believe Tyler ate it before we got to use it. The picture is of all of us enjoying the gingerbread creation on Christmas Eve ... yummy!

Mammy had to work Christmas Eve until 7pm at the coffee shop so we did a couple of errands to help her out also. I put in the ham to warm it up so that it would be ready for Christmas eve.

We all went to Christmas Eve services this year. Even mom made it in time to do the candle light part of the service. The boys (Toddy and Tyler) went back and sat with her on the pew behind us. They did really well this year with their candles. Mom as always sang silent night in German.

The picture is of Pappy and Toddy before they went to the church services.

After church was over, we all went to mammys house where there was ham and shrimp to eat.

Bobbie had a special treat for the boys this year. She had gotten some reindeer food for the kids to sprinkle out in the yard so they would be sure that Santa and is reindeer would stop.

Sprinkle on the lawn at night

The moon will make it sparkle bright

As Santa's reindeer fly and roam

This will guide them to your home.

This is a picture of them sprinkling the food in the yard from the back patio. Toddy seemed to start getting very excited that Santa was going to visit him tonight.

Todd, Toddy and I also gave Bobbie and early birthday present that she could enjoy all day the next day. We thought it would help make her birthday a little more special. We bought her a crown that said "Birthday Girl" on it and had her wear it most of the day...

Rigging up the Lights

My father has been in the hospital for several days now and we still really haven't found anything seriously wrong with him. We are waiting for the results of the bone scan to come back today. Hopefully like the rest of the tests we will be informed that there is nothing wrong there either. We do know however that he does have a lump on his kidney and once they get this blood level thing stabilized they can operate and remove the mass that they have found, which will result in taking the kidney out completely.

My mother has been driving to Geisinger Hospital everyday to stay with my father only leaving in the evenings when she has to go to work. She is looking very tired because she claims that she has not been sleeping well since my father has been in the hospital. Yesterday, after church she left again to go see my father. My sister, Todd and I took it upon ourselves to decorate the house with her lights for her and my sister cleaned the house for her. Hopefully that will lighten her load a little so that she can sit down and rest.

What should we leave out for Santa on Christmas Eve?

On our way home from work and daycare, Toddy was talking about Christmas and Santa Clause. Everytime we drive by a house decorated with Christmas lights, he says "Look mamma, Christmas!"

I asked him what happens at Christmas and he told me that Santa comes. Keeping the conversation going, I asked him if Santa was going to visit him for Christmas, he replied "Yes, I good boy, mamma." I smiled because he always tells me that he has been a good boy.

I asked Toddy if we should leave something for Santa when he comes to the house. He thought about it for a few moments and said "Yes, cookies". I inquired to what type of cookies would like to have and the response was "Two Blue Cookies". I thought that was an unusual color choice because we as adults always think of red and green for Christmas.

I asked, "Would like something to drink with his cookies?" He didn't respond. I asked again if we should leave something, like milk, for Santa to drink with his cookies. He replied, "Yes a beer." At first I wasn't sure if I heard his response correctly and I asked him to repeat what we should leave Santa on Christmas eve and his response was....

"Two blue cookies and a beer, mamma."

Heidi's Senior Pictues

Heidi has recently gotten her senior pictures taken and we are currently looking at the proofs to decide which ones we want to get. (and that is a very tough decision because they are all really good) I have gotten one of the pages I want to put together for her to look at. I can't wait until I get more time to experiment with the other images.

Credits:

Heidi had her senior pictures taken locally by Wentzel Photography Studio. Image retouching, layout creation, and other other effects have been done by me.

(If anyone would like me to create a layout like this for them, please feel free to contact me. This page would be for a 6 x 6 scrapbook but the layout could be modified to fit your needs. Cost approximately $20.00 for the file setup and you would own the file to take where you wanted to be printed.)

Singing Songs.

Toddy is really starting to enjoy singing songs. At daycare they have been trying to teach him how to sing Jingle Bells. I think that they are going to be doing something with the parents in regards learning this.

We have fun listening to any song that he tries to sing right now because he gets stuck, kinda like a broken record or a cd that skips. Last night for example he was singing the Wiggles song "Hot potato" For at least 5 minutes I heard the phrase of the song that goes "Wooo wiggy wiggy wiggy, Woo wiggy wiggy wiggy, Give me that, Give me that, Give me that FOOD!"

Some of the Songs he likes to sing are:
Hot Potato
Fruit Salad
Jingle Bells
Thomas Theme Song
Thomas - He's the One
Monkeys Jumping On the Bed