Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Christmas 2008

We had a great time celebrating Christmas with all our many families. Christmas Eve we had even more snow and so the girls spent a good portion of the day playing in what we had hoped to be the last of the snow storm. They made two huge snow men and two little guys… they had a great time and didn't seem tired of it a bit!
Snow man and little ones (we ran out of usable hats for the tiny one on the right!)


This is their other one they made and the first one made long ago... the one Bill said would last a week - Syrah and I said it would last until Christmas and Sadie said it would last until New Years. She fell over on 12/26 the day after Christmas, but a pile of snow is still in her place today!

Christmas Eve evening we went to Grandma & Grandpa Hopper’s; what a blessing to have that entire family together considering the year behind. We had a wonderful dinner and then the kids exchanged gifts (we eliminated exchanging adults this year, which was great!). At the end the kids play a game that their Aunt Gail put together about three years ago. It is like White Elephant, but quite fun… Aunt Gail wraps up 20 gifts and the youngest opens first, then it goes in age order and you can either take someone else’s gift or unwrap your own. The first year she did this with cereal; it was a riot. The following year she had saved Costco boxes and inside was some type of candy (whoppers, skittles, M&M, etc), this year she did drinks like Gatorade, Power aid, etc in all different flavors. It is quite creative of her and super fun for the kids… they cheer each other on and give each other grief when they take from another person.

Sadie, Jake & Jeff - all three of them are months apart!!


Grandma and Grandpa Hopper - it was good to see them both home together and smiling!



The girls... I am the oldest of the grandchildren and the first with Great-grandchildren; here is a picture of all the girl cousins. Morgan, Nicole, Sadie, Grandma Hopper, Carissa, Kelli, Syrah and Kate.



This picture was taken at about midnight when we got home and the girls put on their new PJ's they were given from Grandpa Bill & Grandma Cindy in Medford.

Christmas morning we continued the tradition Billy had growing up; we enjoyed some cinnamon rolls and opened a few gifts from each other.

Sadie & Syrah gave each-other Chia pets (which are currently growing strong)!

We then headed out to Ballard to spend Christmas day with my mom and Grandma. We had a wonderful dinner, good laughs and shared some gifts… loved our time together.
Grandma Valerie & Syrah

Grandma Valerie & Sadie (this captures their relationship very well... love this picture).


Great-Grandma Connie & Sadie


Great-Grandma Connie & Syrah

Friday was the quite day although Billy ended up in bed not well at all. The girls and I headed out to do our grocery shopping and found that pushing a card on half rutted ice is not so fun. A very nice man came to help me and Sadie (as we were trying to LIFT the full cart) and he proceeded to fall very hard. I felt horrible, but he hopped right up and brought the cart all the way to our car… total blessing because I wasn’t sure what I was going to do!

Saturday Billy continued to get well in bed and by late afternoon was feeling well enough to join us while my Dad and Kelly came for dinner. By this time I forgot about my camera, so I apologize for the lack of pictures. We had a good food, played some cards and then we introduced them to Rock Band, which from the pictures you can see they enjoyed! We then enjoyed some more cards until very late hours.
Dad, Kelly & Billy jamming out to Rock Band.

Sunday we went over to spend some time with Bob & Lorene Jansson, they were gracious enough to have us for dinner, it is great that we get to celebrate Christmas with them too.

We hope that the rest of our family and our friends had a blessed holiday and that the memories of this Christmas will be cherished!!

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