I'm blogging in bits and pieces as my energy allows, so it'll take a bit to catch up.  The photos in this blog are a few of the Snapfish album invitation I sent to everyone.

Christmas Eve:   Toria's family and Nat all came over on Christmas Eve.  We had considered going to Ventura/Oxnard, but couldn't work it all out with work schedules, and my health, so the girls came here.  Toria's family for the whole day; Nat joined us later and spent two nights with us.

We had a good time eating and opening presents.  Since Nat was staying over night, Hal and I decided to open stockings with her on Christmas morning, but the others opened theirs and then we opened all the presents under the tree.

I had started a chicken roasting in the oven while we opened, played and chatted. By the time the chicken was done and I had taken it out of the oven, I started to run out of breath, so Hal and Brian took over the kitchen.  Brian carved the chicken and Hal finished the vegies, the girls set the table. After dinner, Toria and Rebekah cleaned up the dishes and the kitchen.  Made me tear up to see Rebekah, all tall and grown up, rinsing the dishes and helping to clean like a pro - and she didn't complain once.  She's so close to becoming a woman.  Mary, too, has matured a lot, applauding while watching others open gifts, instead of focussing on when she would get another.

We started with or usual "Christmas Train", passing presents down the ine from the cupboard they were stored in, through the laundry romm, an to the tree.  Rebekah had already donned the "Santa" hat - actually a tree, but whoever wore it got to pass the presents out.  When she got tired, Hal wore the hat, and then Mary was the final "Santa".  Ted was just his usual happy self.



Oh! and Ted stood up on his own for the first time - without the aid of a couch or chair or anything - for about 2 seconds.  He's always bouncing - on the floor, on your lap - like he's excited about jumping up and running.  He was doing his usual bouncing on the floor and suddenly found himself on his feet.  Too fast to get a picture.

Here are some of the better shots from the 24th:

Hal loves to shoot me with toys.  One year He had this popgun with a styrofoam snowman head attached to a rubber band.  He'd pop me with that Santa head when I'd least expect it.  After it broke, we couldn't find another for him.  Keep that in mind. 

One of our favorite weird movies "Nice Girls Don't Explode", had a scene in it where a cat was leashed to a retractable clothes line.  The cat ran as far out as possible, then "rubberbanded" backwards into the air. The line was something like "Watch Fluffy Fly".

I found a unique gift for Hal, called a Cat-a-pult.  Now he can load it with little plastic cats and shoot me with Fluffy.  As you can tell, he was pretty happy about that.









I made Ted this cute little bear hat with ears and everything.  Brian wants one, too.



















Mary was excited about the purse I made her.  My first attempt at felting.








































Rebekah posing with the loopy boa scarf I made for her.



















Nancy & Bob gave us jigsaw puzzles of 10 landmarks.  The semi-horrific look on my face occurred when I thought that all 10 might be thrown in there together instead of in separate boxes.  We'll explore this after I'm feeling better.
















We gave Ted this put-together "corral".  It has lots of windows to peek through, blocks to attach to the top edges, and a wall of playful things.  It's better than a playpen because of all the doohickeys - he's really fond of stuff that has buttons and handles and makes noises.  And still keeps him in a protected area and out of the oven.









Nat is wearing the beaded scarf I made her.  Similar to Marty's, but more colorful.   I forgot to put the no-red-eye setting on my camera, and the program I used to remove the red-eye effect didn't work on her eyes for some reason.  But the Snapfish tools worked great!













Hal and I don't really need any more stuff, and had agreed not to buy each other a bunch of presents; to pool our money and get a Wii game system instead.  We got a really good package deal, and Toria and Hal each gave us games for it (it came with 3 already).  After lunch the girls kept begging me to set it up.  So I slowly put it all together (and was happy to see it was backwards compatible with the Gamecube games and controllers).  Got it all together and four of us played Mario Party 8.  Took a little getting used to the controllers, but we all caught on pretty fast.  Rebekah even tried the Wii Music disc, "playing" the piano.

The best part of the whole day was having everyone together.  Rebekah, Mary, and Ted are growing and changing so quickly now.



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