It's About Time

As you can see it is past the middle of January and I'm barely getting around to blogging about our holidays. (I hope that isn't a sign of what the year to come will be like!)


Once all our family got home we had plenty to do before Christmas even got here. We had to take Amelia to have her first picture with Santa.
Take a family photo for our Christmas cards that never got made or sent. (Sometimes something just has to give and that is what I gave up on this year. I've had terrible guilt but it will eventually go away.) We do look pretty good don't we. What is even better is that we didn't even plan on taking our picture that day and everyone just happened to coordinate. I just love it when things like that happen.

We had to make a quick trip to St. Johns so Amelia could meet all of her great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. My dad even came over from Albuquerque. Here is Garth with his mom and Amelia.

Amelia also needed her first hair cut which I wasn't too happy about being chosen to do. The top and sides turned out pretty okay but the back looked awful. Good thing Lonica has her wear headbands all the time.

And of course we had to play with Amelia every moment she was awake.

Finally, Christmas Eve arrived and we all sat down for dinner. Without Anita, Rob and their kids here this year our table seemed kind of empty. But for the first time in two years we had Jason home and that was wonderful!

After Christmas Day, we just sat around for the next week in a messy house, eating, playing games and going to movies. It was wonderful. Here we are having a fondue dinner with Preston's friend, Clark. He was really impressed with fondue and we taught him to play hearts. That is all he still wants to play.

Scott also made us a speculaas-cake. Anita had brought the recipe and spices for it last year, but we never had time to make it. None of us had eaten it before or knew what it was supposed to look like but right or wrong it was delicious!

Finally, on New Year's Day I decided to get outside and get some exercise by hiking with a friend, Terry, and his friend. This is a picture at the beginning of our hike (actually we'd probably gone a mile already) and you can see Flat Iron (our destination) way in the background, it's that point clear in the back.

Once we got to the top of Flat Iron we could see the top of the Superstitions about 1/2 mile further, so of course we had to go up there. Here I am at the top and you can see Flat Iron down to the right of me. It was a good way to start the new year - on top of the world (or the top of the Valley).

Since that day life has gotten back to normal. I'm taking four classes this semester, Lonica, Scott and Amelia went back to Ohio, Jason went back to Utah, Preston started his last semester of high school, Garth, Dave, Raquel and I all went back to work. So while life is back to our same routine, we will always look back to this past Christmas as one of our best - just a lot of family time, good food and relaxation.