Christmas in Ohio

We had a great Christmas. Here are a few photos.We have had rain the last few days, so no white Christmas for us, but it was still cozy and snug in our warm home here in Ohio.

The kids were up at 7:00 am, and we headed down to open our stockings.

After presents, the kids put on their new clothes and started playing. They had a fun afternoon. Benjamin is teaching Emily the finer points of how to play Pokemon. He also put together some Lego Star Wars sets, and played with his Star Wars figures.
Emily got a music box with jewelry that she put on right away. She also got some new Polly pockets, Tink slippers that are darling, and a Barbie car.
Joshua has a race car track that is so fun to play with. He got a pop gun from Santa and a fun doodle pro.
He also loves playing with his crocodile dentist game.
He and I played it at least 20 times yesterday.

All of the kids got their first Webkinz animal, which we have been trying to play with since yesterday. Apparently Christmas is a popular day on their website.

We had another family over for dinner, with lots of kids (pretend cousins?) to play with. We had a great Christmas, and send a big thank you to everyone who thought of us this year!
We miss all of our family!

Christmas Eve 2008

We had a wonderful Christmas Eve, with many family traditions. We ate meatballs and found an almond in the riscrem (Dave won the chocolate Santa, but he shared).

We re-enacted the Nativity play. Emily was Mary (of course),
while Joshua played opposite her as Joseph.

Benjamin was a handsome wise man.

Dave played the shepherd, while I was the angel and narrator.

The kids all opened one present on Christmas Eve. What a surprise, it was pajamas! They jumped all over the place, though, and put them on right there in the living room.
They all looked so cute! Dave and I have matching jammies,
but they weren't as flattering on us as on the kids!

The Nutcracker

Emily and I went to see the Nutcracker on December 12th. She really wanted to go, and I was excited to have a mother/daughter evening, but I was worried that she might not like the ballet. I needn't have worried. She loved it! I offered to leave at intermission, but she wanted to stay for the sugar plum fairies. We sat on the 4th row back, and had great seats to see all the facial expressions, and even the sweat glistening on the leading man! It was great. Before the ballet, we went out for french fries and all you can eat sundaes at Max and Erma's. Emily said it was the best night of her life, which is all a mother can really ask for!

Here we are getting ready to leave.

Here is Emily with her "fancy" sundae. She thought mine was boring because it was mostly brown (chocolate), while hers had every color of the rainbow. I think we both liked our own!

Visiting Santa

Greene County offers a free night out with Santa. They have lights, a wagon ride, face painting, and of course, the chance to sit on Santa's knee. We went last weekend, and had a great evening.

Emily and Josh posed with one of the "reindeer."

Dave and Josh waiting to have their faces painted.

Benjamin had a snowman put on his cheek!
We splurged and bought a picture with Santa. Dave doesn't like buying pictures, because he can usually take better ones, but he has been strangely pleased with this one of our family.

Dave wrote up a trip report for our Grand Canyon 2007, adventure, and posted it to Summit Post last week. Today it is on the main page of summitpost. Go to www.summitpost.org in the next few days to see it on the headlines, or anytime after that and look under the Grand Canyon section. We also have a description of the trip here on our blog if you look in the archives.

Presidential Traverse

This September Dave met John Chesnut in Boston and drove up to the White Mountains of New Hamshire to do the "Presidential Traverse"---a 24 mile ridge crossing over at least 11 peaks in 15 hours. There is enough up and down in this trip to be equivalent to climbing the Empire State building 7 times. I've always want to go up Mt Washington, so I'll have to get Dave to take me back (shouldn't be too tough). See John's trip report details and pictures:

Link to Presidential Traverse Trip Report: summitpost.org