Christmas Eve Eve

It wouldn't be Christmas without Christmas sugar cookies.

This is my favorite picture of Rachel.
She really gets into her frosting of her cookies.

We celebrate Christmas Eve Eve, since the Henshaw's were leaving on Christmas Eve day.

Of course, we had the Olson traditional chicken scampi dinner. Joy had to do Mel's job of the dipping the chicken in the egg and she really missed you Mel!!

Rachel was a big fan of the linguini for sure!



After dinner and singing traditional song from our repertoire, Grandpa Bob read from Luke 2 by candlelight and then it was present time.

We were trying to get all the girls to hold up their pictures and smile. This one is Rachel's response to "Where's your smiley face?"


I had cross-stitched all the girls a Disney princess. They had watched the process and Lizzie even asked me if she could see
the "Snow White cloth" when I was finished. The girls were thrilled with the finished product and Lizzie even asked if I could make her another "cloth". All in all it was a wonderful celebration!

Christmas Fun!

My Christmas vacation began exactly a week early since Shannon had the foresight to have her baby on December 12th. My school district was striking so I left the picket line to come be with the Bowles family and was able to stay for the whole week :-) I got home in time to direct my SCCC concert. It was special this year because we were doing all the songs from our Snowball family repertoire. The kids were so excited to sing for Grandma Snowball. We started with We Need a Little Christmas, then Who Would Send a Baby, with a wonderful boy soprano soloists, followed by A Child is Born in Bethlehem, and end with Silent Night Lullaby with the audience joining in, just like the Snowball tradition. The kids did beautifully and it was a nice tribute for my mom.

Wednesday before Christmas Joy and family arrived and stayed until Christmas Eve. We had a great time. After visiting the great grandparents they came to play at Grandma B's and Grandpa Bob's. (Rachel's mostly excited to see Chloe!) There were presents under the tree to open and start the fun. . .paint with water books and Fancy Nancy's Splendiferous Christmas. Since Joy had told them that I had planned fun things, Mimi kept asking after every activity what we were doing next. Pheww, I was really pressured to keep up the fun!! Fortunately Jules helped me in the fun department. She is truly a super fun auntie!

After visiting with Joy's friend Aimee and her cute little family and a pizza dinner we headed out for a tour of the fun neighborhood with the lights (to keep Mimi happy!!)







Then it was home for hot chocolate with as many marshmallows as you could fit in the cup ;-)

Welcome to our New Blog!

For Christmas this year Julianna gave us a new camera. She even let us open it up three days early when Joy forgot her camera while visiting us. Since Jules is such a wonderful blogger and posts so often . . . she mentioned that now with the camera and ALL these pictures that maybe we should start a family blog and all three of us work on it. So that is what we've done and we hope you enjoy!