Merry Christmas to all and to all a Good Night!

We hope that you all had a very Merry Christmas!  We didn't go far this year.  In fact, we had a very nice and simple morning at home this year.  And in the afternoon we drove to Ft. Collins to be with Jay's mom.  While we were there it snowed quite a lot.  So, we were glad that we didn't travel far.  Jay decided to sleep in on Christmas morning.  Penny woke up WAY too early, like 5 am, because of the excitement of anticipating Christmas day.  So, she got up when she heard mom up at 7 am.  I (Mom) had to laugh, because the first thing she thought of in the morning was wanting to make guacamole.  She headed over the fruit/veggie bowl and said, "Where's the avacado?"  Well, the funny thing was that it was missing!  I said, "I wonder where it could be?!"  That girl was so smart.  She was onto me right away and went straight to the Christmas stockings.  Sure enough!  "Santa" had felt sorry for Mommy the night before when "he" noticed that Mommy's stocking would be empty.  So, he placed the bag of pecans from the neighbors and the lone avacado in Mommy's stocking!  She also took a sneak peek into her own stocking and saw the bag of Thai Lay's potato chips that I hadn't wrapped.  So, these two gifts were "opened" early before Daddy got up.

 

So, Penny and I made a big breakfast of eggs, rice, toast, guacamole and hashbrown patties.

 

Jenny decided to join us for breakfast, since Jay was sleeping in.

  After breakfast Penny was fading fast while Jay was just starting to stir.  So, I convinced her to go take a nap while Jay ate his breakfast and we took our showers, and I did a few more last minute preparations to get ready for our festivities.

  Finally, when everyone was ready and the nap was over, we got together in the living room to listen to the personalized story book of "The Night Before Christmas" from Hallmark that Jay made for Penny last Christmas.



Then we opened up gifts.

  It was a very fun time.  A big highlight was how thrilled Jenny was to get her toy skunk, whose tummy holds catnip.  She was trying to play with it before I could even remove it from its packaging!



I think one of Penny's favorite gifts were all of the different flavors of Thai lays that I ordered for her from Thailand.  In true adolescent fashion, she inhaled them within days.

 

 

In the afternoon on Christmas day,  we drove up to Ft. Collins to see Jay's mother.  She didn't want to cook, so we ate out at Country Buffet.  I feel awful that I never took any pictures of Mother!  But, that's what I often do.  I get too busy talking with people and forget to take pictures of them!  I did take one picture of Penny when she opened a fun gift from Grandma.

 

I also took pictures of Grandma's pretty decorating at her house for Christmas.

 

After spending some relaxing time at Grandma's home, we drove around Ft. Collins in the snow and looked at lights.  It was definitely a white Christmas!

 

Also, I forgot to mention, that before Christmas, we really enjoyed hearing Jay sing in the Cherry Creek Chorale Christmas concert.  My favorite part was when the singers surrounded us in the audience and gave us true surround sound with a beautiful song, "Sure on this Shining Night".

 

We hope that you, too, were surrounded by God's amazing true love on that shining night!  And not just on Christmas night, but on each and every night of the year, as you realize that He came down for you and me, because He wanted to save us all!