Sunday, December 24, 2006

Christmas Eve

It's here at last! The day started with church this morning, then full turkey dinner for lunch at my parents' with my siblings and brother-in-law-to-be as well, then the opening of presents. In the past several hours, the boys have not ceased to play with either the new Thomas the Tank Engine set (Culdee and the apple orchard cars) and animal-shpaed flashlights (that turn off automatically after a couple minutes -- yea for not having to get out new batteries every day!). Wade and I also scored some fun new stuff, including a couple new games, gift certificates to our favorite stores and more.

Tomorrow we will go to church in the morning, then head up to the wave pool in Matsqui with the boys after an early lunch, then home for naps for EVERYONE (hopefully), and finally the extended DeWaard family dinner and gift-exchange in the evening. Should be loads of fun!

I'll try to load pictures soon, but am currenlty having internet issues.

Merry Christmas to all!

Saturday night fun

One of my (Kerri) new favorite games to play with our Saturday night crew is The Story Game. For those not familiar with it, it goes like this. Each participant gets a sheet of paper and writes one line of a story at the top, then passes it on. Each person reads the line that's been written, continues the story with another line, then folds the top down before passing it on again. Thus each person can only read the last line written before adding another line. This continues until the paper is full or people are tired of writing. The results are often comical, horrific and absurd (more or less so depending on who is playing). Following is a story from a recent round --

"Once upon a time a girl tripped over a big-foot in the woods... She fell on her face and got a pine cone stuck up her nose... When the dog barked, she got it stuck in her throat... because the dog startled her... she now has nightmares about dogs robbing her... so she goes to sleep with 24 cats hoping they will have power in numbers... But the cats were too stinky to sleep with... so they purchased a bottle of Herbal Essences to help with the odor... This did not help so the only thing left to do was burn it... but there was a burn ban on at the time so they had to dispose of it differently... They decided to bury it under the swing set at the park... but the teacher caught them and sent them back to class... where they had the punishment of scrubbing all the toilets... and they also had to follow the pipes and clean them with toothbrushes... Their toothbrushes got so dirty they had to go to Wal-Mart to go get new ones... and they bought new toothpaste to go with them... The end."

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Advent... fun in the waiting

Here are a few more pics of the snow, which is entirely gone save for a few piles in local parking lots.

Levi caught air going off a jump in the sled.


Luke and Wade took a walk on a frozen pond near the farm.


Even Lij liked it, except for wearing his mittens.

Advent is one of my favorite times of year, thus we have an Advent wreath in our home and light one or more candles on it every morning. This morning was Isaac's turn (he's got quite the case of bed head in this picture!). We're up to two candles now since it's the second week of Advent. While it is lit, we read Luke 2, adding another verse or phrase every day so that on Christmas morning we'll read the whole thing. I am amazed at how well Isaac is memorizing it, especially since it's full of words like "Caesar Augustus," "census," "governor" and "Nazareth" that he's not familiar with. Celebrating Advent daily seems to bring back a bit of that "I can't wait for Christmas!" feeling that kids have. It's the waiting and preparing and decorating and counting down the days that are half the fun of Christmas (and playing with fire -- I mean, lighting candles -- is always fun too!).
We wish you all a blessed and joyous Advent, too!

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

The More Family the Better

So my sister's wonderful, fabulous, handsome boyfriend is no longer her boyfriend -- but that's okay because he's now her fiance! Congratulations to Kris and Jonathan who got engaged the day after Thanksgiving and are planning a wedding for July 7, 2007 (7-7-07, as a matter of fact) at my parents' home. He proposed on an Atlantic Ocean beach a couple hours from his parents' Baltimore home -- how romantic. They will both be spending Christmas break in Washington -- YEA!!!!