Christmas #2

Christmas #2 started on Dec. 27 when the first of our "kids" and "grandkids" arrived.  We were  blessed to be able to have all six of our children and most of our grandkids down for a late Christmas celebration.  Today is New Year's Eve and two of them were still able to be with us.  Most of the rest went home this afternoon so they could spend the evening at home and get to work/school Wednesday.  Aaron needed to go yesterday since he had work today.  Anyway we are passing New Year's Eve in our usual way -- eating some goodies and watching a movie or playing a game.  Anyway we were happy to have them here with us.

Christmas #1 is over

Well, the official Christmas is over for the year 2012.  We did have Alan's brother Dave and his wife Wanda come to see us for Christmas #1.  They arrived Christmas Eve in the afternoon, spent the night and left the next morning after breakfast.  They had things to be back for on Christmas Day.  Tonight begins Christmas #2.  Aaron, Jeanette, Noah, Laura, Karen, Mike J., Andrew & Emily arrive.  Then Friday Amy, Mike P., Zach, Khoen, and Hailey come.  Saturday Michael B., Laura, Dominic, Dustan, Whitney, Sierra, and Danny arrive.  Unfortunately Jason isn't able to come; he couldn't get enough time off work.  We'll miss you, Jason.  We'll be a total of 20 when all are here.  It will be crowded but happy to be so.  We are so blessed to have such a wonderful family who all love one another.  I've been thinking a lot about that today.

Here's a picture of the pie I made on Christmas #1.

It's a cream cheese pie with blueberry filling.

There have been several other changes around here in the past two days.  I'll share a couple of them in the blog; the other one will wait until you get here -- those of you who are coming for Christmas #2 anyway.  If you aren't coming, you'll have to wait a little while.  I will put it on the blog later when I get a chance to put a picture with it.  We came into a little money thanks to the VA so we bought a couple of things.  Here are the first two:

We replaced our old TV.  We probably would have just kept using the old one but every time we tried to watch it the reflections blocked about half the picture.  That was getting a bit old. We found a pretty good price on this one right after Christmas #1.

 

 

 

Next:  It's a Nikon Coolpix  -- a gift to me from Alan.  He knew that I like to take pictures and got frustrated with our current camera.  I told him that it was usually because I was doing something wrong, but he thought I deserved a better camera.  I'd better learn all I can about this one.  Amy, you may need to help me with this.

I am quite happy with it.

Giving Away Christmas

No pictures with this post.  I was reading an article by Daris Howard.  You're probably wondering who that is.  He is a writer who contributes to the ldsliving.com website.  I particularly enjoy Mr. Howard's articles.  I've emailed several website addresses to many of you lately.  You may be getting tired of my suggestions to read this or that.  This one however goes along so well with Pres. Thomas S. Monson's first presidency message for the month of December.  I think you will enjoy this one.  Here is the address. Hope you like it.

http://www.ldsmag.com/article/1/11947

Christmas is Coming. . . .

Here's our Christmas tree complete with train.  Thanks again to all of you who contributed to the train gift.  Can that really have been over five years ago?

Crinkly French Bread

We had the Elders over for dinner tonight so I got busy and made lasagna.  We hadn't had that for a long time.  You can't have lasagna without French bread so I did that too.  Making French bread makes me think of Remy on the movie "Ratatouille ".  Such a cute movie.  My bread crinkled when I took it out of the oven. Remy would have been proud.

Eeek!  It looks like I have no teeth!

Christmas Lights

Just as a teaser, here is part of the front of our house.  We actually put some lights up this year.  It was probably because we will be here instead of traveling.  It would look better if you could see the roof.  I told Alan it looked like a mobile home in the picture.

Christmas Season in Branson

Okay, yes, we did go to Branson again.  You're probably wondering if we ever go anywhere else.  We had this trip paid for almost a year ago and had to use it or lose it.  It actually was a pretty good time to go since the performers were doing their Christmas shows.  I'm not posting any pictures of the shows but here is one that we had a nice man take of us near a shopping area.

It was a little cool but not cold like today.  Notice I am wearing a heavy coat and Alan is in shirt sleeves.

Creches & Carols 2012

Well, Creches & Carols is over again for another year.  Alan & I were in St. Louis during the week so we missed out on setting up the displays.  We spent most of the day at the church on Saturday though, greeting people and presenting some musical numbers.  He played the piano for a while and then we had a small "choir".  We just grabbed whoever was available at the time and sang some Christmas carols.  It sounded pretty good though.  It took five hours to take it all down and box it up.  Whew!  We were glad when that was done.  We had a good turnout though and felt good about it all.

Each room had a color scheme.  This was sort of the red room.  There were even some trees with red cardinals in them.

Don't you love those palm trees?  Corina made over 50 of them.  Remarkable!

Here is the "blue room".  I took this one so you could see what it looked like when we turned out the lights.

Here's one view with the lights back on.

The branch president's room was set up so that people could sit and watch a nativity video if they wanted.  There was also "Mr. Krueger's Christmas".

Here is a portion of the "gold room".  Gold sounds better than saying the "brown room".

Some of our younger members came to help.

Here is one of our live nativity Mary's.  Sorry if that looks wrong but Marys looks even worse.  Isn't she a darling little Mary?

Our elders were there to show the video and answer any questions people might have.

We started out with a trio.

Then we snatched up three men to join us.

This is Mary & Joseph with Baby Jesus and ---yes, while Joseph has baby duty, Mary has been busy with her digital camera.

Our children's area included the live nativity (with no animals) and a section with unbreakable nativity sets that could be played with.  Many of the little ones settled in there while their parents looked at the displays.  Everyone seemed happy with that arrangement.

Here are some of the Relief Society members who worked Saturday.  They are the ones who were there when we started clean-up.  Our little Joseph and Marys wanted to join us in the picture.  They were really troopers.

Come to the Temple

Merry Christmas from the St. Louis, MO Temple.  Please come visit; we only had 14 endowments the entire afternoon today.  Show the Lord that you care this Christmas season.

We're at Amy's and I can't post pictures of the twins, but here's one I took that struck me as funny. Poor Grover!

Look at the size of the coat rack.  So cute.  I could have moved the boxes of diapers, but hey, that's part of the environment around here.