Merry Christmas 2010 and Happy New Year, too!

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Merry Christmas!
Our Christmas celebration this year was fun. We started out the day MUCH too early thanks to 2 boys who shall remain nameless,... who just couldn't sleep & HAD to get up. These 2 nameless children have spent most of their Christmas break sleeping in until noon, but not on Christmas morning! Despite having a hard time going to sleep on Christmas Eve, they bounced into our bedroom and dragged us out of bed & demanded that the fun should begin! So, being the good but sleepy parents that we are, but finally let them enter into the livingroom so they could see their loot.

Among the goodies - Ian got a new MP3 player & some funny Cookie Monster undies, and Cole got a massive Nerf gun that is bigger than he is. And they both got several video games as requested. Cole also got something unexpected - 'Big Lenny' the giant crappy he caught back in the spring finally came back from the taxidermist. We didn't tell him, or wrap it up - we just hung it on the wall & waited for him to notice it. It took awhile, but when he finally spotted it - he was pretty impressed. He was also quite surprised with his bacon themed gifts.... Cole being silly, had put 'bacon' down on his Christmas list. So I found a bacon wallet, bacon bandaids, and a book all about bacon for him! Too FunnY!!!







The best Christmas surprise arrived around noon...it started snowing! The Atlanta area hasn't had a white Christmas since the 1880s, so this was quite the Christmas present for everyone. The flakes were huge & fluffy - so pretty to just sit by a window & watch it fall.







New Years was a little bit quieter than usual this year. No special reason...we just were all in a mellower mood I guess. The kids played with their sparklers & some small fireworks, and the adults sat around the campfire chatting & laughing. It was so quiet & mellow that Blake fell asleep in his chair! But all in all it was a pleasant evening.



Rusty made his weird burnt paper flying things....
Its starts out with newspaper twisted & poofed into a bubble. He lights the 4 corners & it burns up...but then if all goes as planned, something really cool happens - it takes flight! It is the coolest looking thing you've ever seen!! (And according to Rusty, in his wilder teenage years, he use to launch them while night-fishing from underneath a local road's bridge. I can just imagine the stories that driver of a car that was passing by still tells about the night he was a 'burning hot UFO'!!! )




We spotted this big ol' barred owl in Pops' driveway as we were arriving for New Years Eve dinner...and finally got a fairly good picture of him.


All in all, 2010 was a good, but challenging year. The economy still stinks - but our Faith in the Lord providing for our needs has carried us through. We are blessed to be together, healthy, and have our home. I am blessed beyond words to have a job I love and be able to serve the Lord while doing it. Blake would much rather be working - but having this unexpected blessing of time off has given him something precious...time with the boys. So, while the $ situation could definitely be better...it could always be worse, so we'll take each day as it comes & continue to count our blessings...because when you get right down to it, God has really & truly just blessed our socks off.