It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Some random photos of Christmas cheer...!

 

Come, All Ye Shepherds

Here are a few photos from our traditional Christmas Eve "shepherds' dinner."

This year the menu included roast beef, flatbread, mozzarella cheese, olives, grapes, salad, and grape juice.  It was really good.

And here are the "shepherds"...

Deck the Halls

Here are some photos of the annual "gingerbread" house decorating.  Some festive creations from...

Lisa...

... Andrew...

... Rachel and Alex...

... Daniel...

... Yours Truly...

... and Yumiko.

Blowin'

Unbelievably, Daniel is 13!  Where did the time go?

He was excited to open a few presents...

... and show off the stylin' new braces...

... and partake of the traditional Birthday Donuts.  Krispy Kreme, of course.

Happy birthday, Daniel!

Thanksgiving Day

On Thanksgiving we went to Jeff and Maria's house.  There were lots of fun things to do, like make crafts (Oreo/candy corn turkeys)...

... visit with relatives...

... hang out with really cute cousins...

... and eat!

There were cute chocolate / marshmallow / cookie pilgrim hat placecards.

Jeff carved the bird.

Yum!

 Mom and Dad dishing up.

Everybody enjoyed adding leaves to the "thankful" tree.

We tried taking some photos to use for Christmas cards.  Here are some outtakes.  I think this one actually worked fairly well -- but with the low winter sun, it was so darned bright that everybody had a hard time keeping from squinting.

This one worked out pretty well, too, I think.

Rachel didn't get the memo about it not being a goofy photo. :)

I'm not sure why, but I kind of like this one.  It kind of looks like an album cover photo or something.

Jeff and Maria grew some seriously big pumpkins.

Happy Thanksgiving!

20 candles

Rachel's birthday was the week of Thanksgiving.  It's a nice time for a birthday for a college student, because we get to celebrate with her while she's home for Thanksgiving.


The day started out with lawn decorations instigated by one of her good friends.

For her birthday dinner, we went to Chile's.

Ready to dig in!

Daniel attacking a massive slab of ribs.

Intently opening some presents.

She seems to like the new watch!

Instead of a cake, Yumiko made her a pretty lemon creme pie.

Happy birthday, Rachel!