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.

Everyone, please drive carefully as you come see us!