Well, December was quite a month. It has taken too long for us to get pictures up, but we've finally done it.
We started off with the Annual Raytheon Christmas Party. It included the normal assortment of bounce houses, train rides, model train displays, and crafts. This year we also took the time to get a picture with Santa. Bethany for the third year in a row wanted the penguin tattoo. Of course, our batteries died early at the party and we didn't get many pictures. That's ok. There are plenty of other pictures to show you.
The girl's first "Christmas" was actually back in November with Uncle Kenton and (soon-to-be Aunt) Kerry. The next Christmas was the weekend of 11-12 December when Papaw and Grandma came to town. The picture of Papaw reading the Grinch to Caroline may seem innocent enough, but what you can't perceive from the picture is how engrossed she was with the Grinch this Christmas. She could almost sing the whole Grinch song, and on her request, we drove past houses with Grinches in their yards countless times. Weird kid! Bethany got her "Monster Truck" (what she asked Santa for) at this first Christmas from Papaw, and Caroline got another Care Bear (this one sings and dances... oh joy!). In the picture Caroline is having her two Care Bears kiss. Also this weekend was Bethany's choir performance in church. None of these pictures turned out very well, so you'll have to come to our house to see the video!
Next was Bethany's class Christmas Party. Here you can see a gift book exchange, a scrum for the candy from a piņata, and kids engrossed in a Bingo game. While Lindsey was with Bethany, Grammy and PopPop attended Caroline's party. So that meant the weekend of 18-19 December was Grammy and PopPop Christmas. In the pics you can see that Caroline was so tired she couldn't stop sucking her thumb to hold PopPop's hand... so she did both. While opening presents the girls took time to show the Whale and Dolphin calendar to Bethany's stuffed Shamu. That weekend Lindsey received her Christmas present, a new bike. So now we're all ready to roll.
In a rare twist, we had snow right before Christmas. There was even some left on the ground Christmas Day (but not much). The snow activities included a snowball fight, building a snow man (ok, that is really a plywood cutout in the neighbor's yard), making snow angels, and riding in the one dad open sled.
On Christmas Eve we ate our big Christmas dinner with Oma, Uncle Clay and Aunt Robyn. We followed dinner with a Christmas Eve service at church. Afterwards, we came back home, where Bethany treated us to the Christmas story, told with shadow puppets. We then opened some presents, took some pictures, and left cookies and milk for Santa.
Christmas Day we opened the last of the Christmas presents, which were highlighted by suitcases for each of the girls, calendars, and books. I was able to take the remainder of the year off as Raytheon shuts down every year between Christmas and New Year.
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