Christmas Day

Our Christmas for 2009 was not as white as it was the year before and we were choosing to not spend as much money on each other as previous years (after all, we are going to Hawaii in January!). With all of that said, though, we had such a nice time together as a family. Ashley and Lauren are at an age where they are really understanding what it is all about. They really look forward to our family Christmas traditions – such as going for a Blizzard at DQ and then driving around to look at Christmas lights, setting up our nativity set collection, getting to open one gift each on Christmas Eve, and Cinnamon Pull Apart Bread and Orange Juice for breakfast – just to name a few. We are also making it a point to read the story of Jesus’ birth from the Bible on Christmas morning before we open our gifts.

It is a joy to have a family and to be able to be together on Christmas every year. I am aware that not everyone in the world has these things and I never want to take it for granted. I am so blessed and so grateful to God for what He has given us. Most importantly, for the gift of His Son!

Merry Christmas!

Christmas with the Aldworths

We had a nice Christmas celebration with Kurt’s family at Grandma Sandy’s house in Sammamish. There was a whole lot of Wii bowling going on. We had a tournament and I won the whole thing. That is just crazy ‘cause in real life I can’t bowl AT ALL!

We shared a bunch of good food and the adults had a really nice conversation about our memories of Christmas traditions. As usual, the girls scored a ton o’ loot and the adults had a pretty fun gift exchange, too. Sandy even had us all take turns reading a story about the 12 days of Christmas and how it relates to the birth of Jesus. It was a really nice night together with family!

Good friends, good times!

We celebrated Christmas all together with Bryce & Elke and Kyle & Terra this year. We all had a ton of fun and the kids got lots of presents! Actually – even the adults got gifts.

Forever friends – posing with the gifts Elke gave T and me.

At one point Lauren decided she wanted to straighten Bryce’s hair. He, being a good Uncle, allowed it or course! Then she got out the make up and that was the end of his dignity for the night! ;)

Night in Bethlehem

Our Church put on a really cool program this year called Night in Bethlehem. It was like taking a trip back in time to what it was like in Bethlehem during the time when Jesus was born. Everyone did such a great job. It looked really cool and engaged all of the senses. From the smell of home made bread in the Bakery Shop to the sound of the the real Blacksmith, pounding the steel. There was even a live Nativity and our Lauren got to play the part of the Angel. :) Kurt played a Tax Collector, Ashley was one of the Townsfolk and I played with the worship team at the end of the night. What a great night it was! I hope we do it again.

“O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree”

We have had an artificial tree for a few years now, but this year we decided to get a real one. The reason we did, a local pastor was raising money for a mission trip to Swaziland where they will be a part of a group that does ministry through soccer camps. We thought that was pretty cool, so we bought one of the trees. It was really nice, too. As usual, we had a good time trimming the tree together to begin the Christmas season. Even though at this point I’d already been doing my shopping for a few weeks and playing Christmas music in the car! :)

Thanksgiving

Holy com, I am way, way, way behind on my posts. So… I’m just gonna dump a few pictures from the last few months in here for now and write up some quick descriptions.

We had a nice Thanksgiving, just the four of us at home alone. It felt so relaxed and easy. I gotta say I liked it actually. With how busy life gets, I enjoyed the simplicity of it.

I loved the food we had – perfect Thanksgiving meal in my mind! YUM!

Lauren and I played a little Scrabble… Ashley decided to dance.

She will NOT be happy that I posted this!!

Musical Family

I have been meaning to post some picture of the girls with their instruments. This year Ashley started playing alto sax in the school band and Lauren has started taking guitar lessons. Both girls are playing well and they are both also enjoying their instruments!! :)

We are so proud of all their hard work!

Trick or Treat

For Halloween this year Ashley went as Tinkerbell and Lauren went as a Candy Corn Witch. We mostly made them from stuff we had at home. Got some good use out of an old dance costume for Ashley’s outfit and for Lauren we we’re lucky enough to have all the right colors of shirts on hand to layer and make the candy corn colors. We just needed a set of wings, a hat and some candy corn colored felt.

Earlier in the day the girls enjoyed carving pumpkins with long-time friend, Taylor who spent the night after the party the night before.

Halloween 2009 was a lot of fun.

Crazy for candy!

Morning after madness!

Halloween Party

Ashley and Lauren really, really, really wanted to have a Halloween Party this year. I was hesitant thinking about how much work it would be to throw a party. The more I thought about it, though, what a fun idea. We could do it the Friday before Halloween and have them invite a few friends. We found lots of fun ideas for food and crafts in a Family Fun magazine.

So I figured, let’s go for it! I spent my day off on Thursday preparing all of the food so that I could come right home from work on Friday and get the party started soon afterwards.

The costumes were really great! The neighbors even loaned us some fun Halloween music, so we had fun dancing, playing limbo, doing crafts and eating tons of fun food. We even had a special pizza delivery from the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz! :)

I hope the girls will have lots of great memories from this really fun party.