The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!!!

Savannah decorating one of our front windows with vinyl stickers.

A santa craft we did with my dayhome kids. She is VERY proud of it.

Decorating my "little kid" tree.


She found this cat costume and had to put it on for photos!


Megan. I love this photo, she looks so happy for once! Not her usual photo face.


Savannah with Santa. Next time we saw him was in a mall and she got her photo taken there as well. Everytime she saw him after that she'd holler "I see Santa! I see Santa!!!"


Concentrating on crushing cookies for a recipe Megan was making. This is year number two of making cookies for our neighbors. Unfortunately I don't have a photo of Megan's finished product to show you. How do you like the tool Savannah is using! She couldn't do it with the rolling pin, it was too heavy. This hammer was just right.

Yes Mummy, I see you watching me!

The shortbread dough was just too much of a temptation!

Daddy and Denver. Denver is mixing the filling for his cookies.

Dirty, happy girl!

Daddy's haystacks

Decorating the tree.

Finished product

Our new tree topper!

The "mittens" I made for an ornament exchange.

Denver's finished product.

Mummy's sugar cookies.

The trays we gave to the neighbor's. Complete with an invitation to the live Nativity pagent at our church. The bar closest to the front of this photo is one of Megan's. So I guess I do have sort of a picture of hers!

Before

During. Some candy sampling was going on!

She did pretty well with it though. The ones on the wavy lines I mostly helped her with.

Finished product. Next year's will be MUCH better!

The stained glass Nativity I made on December 20th. So much fun!

My Neice, Sierra and Savannah in front of the tree after Christmas Eve service at the United Church.

The loaded tree after Santa came!

Christmas morning. Miss messy hair and Miss I got up and showered and fixed my hair and makeup for pictures!

The Dora book she got from the Dayhome agency. She was really excited about it, but it sure doesn't show in this photo!

Megan with her newly repaired phone.

Auntie Amber, Uncle Ray (hiding), Sierra and Jackson, and Grampa (Papa) Gordon off to the side.

Denver with his new skateboard.

The Wii and all it's accessories were hiding under here.

No touchy, No peeking!

Santa got it from the "Oh, this is SO AWESOME!" section of the store! That was the best reaction ever, they kept saying it over and over!

Enjoying another look at Tinkerbell amid all the remains of gift opening!!! It was a fun day!

Discovery

Today Savannah saw a shadow from the ceiling light in our bedroom. She called it the sky! So I explained it was a shadow and then moved us to where we could make shadow puppets on the wall. She thought that was great! So now we have to say "Hi Shadow!, Bye Shadow!" It's fun to watch the cute things she is learning.

Mexico Part One

Views from the airplane

These irrigation circles are neat.

Crazy quilt!

A city, I don't remember which one. The pilot always told us.



Clouds and ocean, I could see boats in it, but you can't in the photo


Hibiscus flower right outside our hotel room



The "alley" outside our patio door. Leads to the ocean.


Waiting to go parasailing! It shocked Rick that I would do this!



Up in the air. It was so cool.


Looking towards all the resorts from the boat. Ours is the one in the middle with the palm leaf roofs on all the main buildings.

When we got back to our room the maid (Rosa) had made this for us. She made something new like it everyday.

Walking towards Playa del Carmen we found this. The next photos are actually "Grupo B," but you get the idea.


Me at the top of one of the ruins.

Beautiful palm tree scenery looking out from the ruin.

The back of the ruins.

A THORNY tree trunk !!!!

These orange flowered trees were in full bloom everywhere. You'll see how big they are later on. They also have HUGE seedpods. They look like giant flat pea pods. Just found the name for this, it is called the "Red Bird of Paradise" or "Mexican Bird of Paradise"

This squiggly sign is for their "speed bumps". They actually go down the way the picture shows instead of up like ours. I much prefer the ones here. These things were all over the place! They also have long meridians all down the highway, so if you want to go somewhere turning left you have to go way past your destination and then take a "Returno" to get back to it on the other side of the highway. Definitely different than we are used to.

This tells about more of the area. If you click on the pictures you can see them bigger to read stuff if you want. The X at the beginning of words makes a "Sh" sound.

Trees growing out of the wall

Bouganveilla in Playa del Carmen. The trunk of it is inside the entrance to the store!

These are called Agouti. They were in the meditation spot under a bridge in our resort. They reminded me of the Dejus we used to have, only much bigger with no tail!

Very large spider on an Agave plant. It was so cool. I especially like the way it made zigzag stitches in the web. Maybe it was trying to make itself look even larger.

At the wall of Tulum. (One of the Mayan Ruin sites you can visit.) There is a lizard behind me that we didn't even know was there until I was taking Rick's photo.

Cactus, flowers and beautiful blue-green ocean.

Us at Tulum

More of us!

One of the larger buildings at Tulum