Joy

I just looked at saw that my word of 2012 was Thrive.....oopps I must have skipped 2013....

We had a long discussion at Faith and Friendship about the difference between Happiness and Joy.  My word for 2014 will be joy!

Christmas vacation FAMILY FUN and FRIENDS

We had a really nice Christmas.  We went to Burlington on Monday (delayed a day due to the weather).

 We got to see about 1/2 of my family!  We played a game called "heads up" and it was a laugh fest.

This is me with my God-children 

 We came back home Christmas Eve and Carolyn sang in the choir.  Christmas Day was lovely and quiet.  The kids got the game Life, which we played with the kids in their PJs. They also got Risk, which Ken played with them the next day.  That game isn't my cup of tea!

I worked on Friday and Ken stayed with the kids.  Saturday morning we finished cleaning the basement because we were expecting company on Monday and Tuesday.  Around 11 we drove to Kansas City.  We met my sister and brother in law for church and they took us out for ice cream.  They gave the kids $10 each to get a special treat at Lego-land.

 Just yesterday Anna said, "I need a picture of Aunt Mary and Uncle Gary" after looking at her album that contains mostly baby pictures.  (in my defense there are other scrap-booked pages that are just not in her album as they would be out of order!)  This picture gets us 1/2 way there!

We rarely have a family shot!  Mary took this one.

We went back to the hotel and the kids went swimming.  The next morning we had a great breakfast at the Embassy suites and headed off to Lego-land.  We were a little early, so we went to Crown Center to look around.

Lego land was great.  We actually ran into one of the interpreters and a surgeon from Blank Children's hospital.  It is really a small world.

We then went to my sister's for dinner and they gave the kids their Christmas gift, which was more money to buy a treat for our next day in Kansas City.  What a fun idea!

We were able to see my sister's girls too, with was nice because we hadn't seen them at Christmas.

Mary is Matthew's Godmother

The next morning we went to the Federal reserve museum (free) and then to the aquarium.  The free museum was pretty cool, but the aquarium was a bit disappointing- but we had pretty low expectations.  We then went to a cool restaurant where they deliver your food by train and headed home.  

We quickly finished cleaning and about  2 hours later we hosted our service fraternity (from college) friends for dinner (one family was visiting from Florida).

I worked the next day and Ken stayed with the kids and got ready for our next party.  Ken's best friend was visiting from South Carolina and another family that Ken has known since kindergarten (and college) joined us.  The family from South Carolina stayed the night and the next day we went to the other friend's home to watch the Outback bowl.

The next day (Thursday) was our anniversary and celebrated by going to the Waterfront restaurant on Friday.  During that day the kids had their friends over and it was a mad house,

Now back to "normal" life.  I much preferred all the celebration and seeing friends and family!

Sorry to be so wordy- once I started I couldn't stop.

Betsy