Christmas

Tom & I rotate Christmas & Thanksgiving. This Christmas was my family's turn. We all met at my parents house. We've all scheduled our holidays so we are all home and away all at the same time. Its always a lot of fun to get together and see one another. We are a very close family and I feel very lucky to have them in my life! This picture is my entire family (including the dog "Duke") except my little brother Blake, who is on a mission in Kentucky! As usual I look adorable! Hehehe!
Probably one of the most exciting things we did was we all went to the Dinosaur museum and out to dinner at "Wingers" together. ( I love their wings....best I've ever had). My nephew loved it there, he is a dinosaur enthusiast. He's only 3, but he can tell you the names of a lot of dinosaurs already! What a little brain! This is a very small picture of Austin under the big dinosaur skeleton in the lobby of the museum! I couldn't get the whole skeleton in the picture and still see Austin at all! We got to see a video of people mining for bones & walked through the museum of all sorts of displays. Here's a picture of Tom in the kids section playing with toys & Tom & I in front of the wall of fossils.
Christmas Day we got to speak to Blakey! He's doing great! He's only got about 10 months to go before he comes home! Everyone on the family got to speak with him. I don't know how much he got out of his conversations with Austin & Kinsey though! He had us this year for Christmas and he got us a digital photo frame. I'm very excited to use it.
Our big Christmas present of the year was the last one we opened. Each couple got a box. We all opened it at the same time and each found a little toy boat in the box with "Cruise 2009" written on it. In about 1 year we will get to go on a 7 day cruise as a family! We are all very excited. Tom & I have wanted to go on a cruise for quite a while! Can't wait!

I had to put this picture of my neice Kinsey on this blog. Her Dad is in the background & her Mom's hand is to the right.