Joy to Our World!

Okay, I realize it’s been over two weeks since Christmas already. But I have a good excuse for taking so long to post these pictures. Kind of. I was determined to have a Christmas day post. I wanted it to be posted December 25 telling everyone Merry Christmas and everything. By the time I had the pictures loaded on my computer and got started it was getting late already. I had typed up my entry earlier and thought I’d saved it already. So I watermark and load all the pictures and go to look for my journaling and… I had deleted it! By the time I discovered this it was already midnight and I was too tired to start over. Why haven’t I posted them since? I guess you could say that the wind was knocked out of my sails. But I’ll post an abbreviated version now. Here’s a little taste of my Christmas…

Christmas eve Mom came up with the wonderful idea of Christmas caroling a few of our friends. Dave and I thought this sounded fun but we wanted to add a few voices to our “choir.” So, we called up the talented James family and were delighted when they agreed to join us in our endeavor. All our other friends were busy so it was just the Jamers (the name we came up with for our “singing group”). As they were leaving to join us M.J. realized she had a flat tire so her parents told her to go ahead and they’d fix her tire. Aren’t they great? Our second stop was my Uncle Allen’s house. John and Allen were home alone so we invited them to join us. Our group now contained 9 people! By this time Mary Jo’s parents had fixed her tire and joined us at our next stop, Dale’s house. Ryan wasn’t doing much so we convinced him to join us, too. Our group had now reached 12. By the end of the night we’d caroled 15-20 of our friends and family and had a blast. The only picture I have that someone took of us at the door is a hard copy and I haven’t scanned it yet, but here are a few pics from the start of our evening:

M.J., Amy, and I anticipating our fun evening
At our first stop
Christmas morning was nice and relaxing. Our family ate a special breakfast, read the Christmas story from Luke, and opened our presents. We kept things a little simpler this year, which was nice. However I did get one present I was totally jazzed about. The Shootsac I’d been wanting! I love, love, love it! I may have to post some pictures of me with it on here sometime. We’ll see if I get around to it. Here are a few Christmas morning picture:

Making Breakfast
The camera Dave got me for graduation has this awesome feature...
Dave hammin' it up

Feigning shock
Again
The awesome present I gave him
Aren't I intelligent?

Late that afternoon we headed to the Sexson’s house for Christmas dinner. The meal was so yummy! We had soup, bread, crackers, and dessert. I think I overdid it just a little… After the meal we opened our presents from each other and watched the girls do a concert for us. They are growing so fast! Our worship consisted of them singing for/with us and a closing prayer.

Shaylee and her Mimi
David and Brenna at dinner
I love that smile!
Shay needed a little help
The five of us

Christmas was absolutely fabulous in our corner of the world. Hope it was in yours, too! May God fill your new year with many blessings!