ON THE ROAD AGAIN...

It's that time to pickup Chelsea. We're headed out tomorrow morning early on that long dreaded trip to Florida. We're going to stay a couple days; make a visit to Animal Kindom, load Chelsea up and come home. It looks like the couple of days that we're going to be there will be cold, then warm up when we leave ( go and figure). I just hope to get home before any bad weather decides to hit.

Christmas Day

Finally Christmas morning, it came pretty quick. Our family opened our gifts on Christmas Morning. The only thing missing was Chelsea.

Alex is digging under the tree trying to find gifts that don't belong to Chelsea. I think all of ours have been opened.

We have dad bar-b-queing and John also has his grill going. Lisa and her kids came over along with John, Alex and me, Diane and her family don't come and have dinner with us. There's dad telling us food's done and let's eat.

Of all the family Vanessa is the one that don't need to exercise, but she's the only one doing it.

Lisa painted this picture her first one like this, and gave it to mom and dad for Christmas. This picture doesn't do that picture justice. She did it all freehand and she did an excellent job. She did another picture but it's in the drying stages now.

Here's Alex with one of his Christmas gifts, his electric guitar. Then below he is playing with his guitar hero game, while John watches.

Below is Lisa and Dad, Dad came and joined us for just a minute and while he was there I decided to take this picture.

I bought a new camera for myself, I've been trying it out. Not sure how to work it yet to get the best pictures. I have found a class that I will be taking that will teach me all about the features of an SLR 35m camera.

Chelsea called us today. I do think she misses home even though she says she doesn't, or maybe it's just because it Christmas and it makes her think of family. We just recently found out she's coming home, she has been saying she was going to stay, her and her roomate had talked about staying and getting an apartment. Now the talk is she is going to California, Arizona and Texas to visit her new friends. I don't blame her for wanting to get out of this little house and get out of this city, I hate it too.

Christmas Eve

We spent Christmas eve with John's family at his parents house.

We had dinner about 7p.m. and around 11p.m. we opened gifts. Here's Alex gathering gifts and passing them out. In the background is John's mother and sister Sandi, on the couch is Sandi's daughter Jackie and Sandi's husband Tony. The other picture is John's brother David and his family, David jr and Becky.

I got this picture of the 3 Johns, but everyone in his family is either married to or named their child John. On another note Chelsea called us last night at midnight and everyone got to talk with her. She didn't have to work on Christmas eve, but she has to go in on Christmas day. She's begging us to keep the tree up so she can open see the tree and open her gifts by it. I'm still thinking about that, it's a real tree and it's been up since the beginning of December.

After all the gifts were open; the paper cleaned up and just before it was time to leave he decides it's chocolate pudding time.

Church Christmas Program

Last night was the 2nd showing of the Christmas program at Church. It should have been last sunday but since we had that snow storm, it was delayed until last night.

They had the children walk in shaking hand on the way. At first he was in the choir. Just over half way through he made his exit and did a costume change.

Then he became Joseph in the manger scene, and was seated above the choir.

They fixed up the baptistery.

The play was about a reporter doing an article on the birth of Jesus, trying to find the facts.

Work Luncheon

A few of the women I work with got together and had us a little Christmas luncheon. We invited the Principal to join us. Each of us brought some food and although there isn't many of us we had alot of food. After eating instead of going back to work we sit in the lounge for another hour and a half talking.

School Christmas Program

Today was the Christmas program at school, I was suppossed to take pictures of the program for a project the principal is doing. I ended up having to take a class in the afternoon, we had 3 teachers leave a 1/2 day and there were only 3 aids at work today so I didn't get to see the program. John came since he's on vacation this week, so I got him to take pictures.
Alex's class did a medley of 3 songs she made up a few years ago, the tune was to a few popular songs around.

When the class I had was up on stage, John got a picture of me peeking in the door.

HURRAY!

I just found out that Detroit Public Schools are closed tomorrow, which means I get to sleep in and relax tomorrow. I went out today about 4pm and the roads were still bad, I guess because of all the blowing. I had to run an errand, and then decided to look for boots for Alex. We were out last weekend and he didn't find any he liked. Today we hit 3 stores before we found something, I had to buy the boots a couple sizes to big, but no big deal maybe he can wear them next year.

Here's a picture of his snow Angel he made today.

Let it Snow!

Well! we're getting us a little snow storm today. According to the news we have about 7" already. I haven't been out yet to shovel so I'm not sure. Dad has been out to shovel, he said it was useless because it doesn't look like he did anything.
Above is my burning bush you can see how far up the snow is. This was about 7:30am. Below is the tree by my porch, looks like there's to much snow on it that it's making it lean.

I got these shots looking up and down the road, It's very beautiful but you can't see very far. It's not 8:45 am and it's still snowing. I've heard we are expected to get about 10", we need this next week for Christmas not now.

I hope this clears up by this evening, we have a Christmas play at church, and my son is in the choir and he is also Joseph.

I took these last 2 pictures about 2pm. Alex and John decided to get out into the snow, John cleaned up the sidewalk because it became a little bit more snow covered, not as much as I had to shovel. They let the dog out and she decides to have a taste. It's still snowing but very little.

December 13th

Today is John and my 21st anniversary, I came home from work with this surprise 2 dz roses. I can't remember if I've ever gotten flowers before.

The Twins

Carsyn looks like a little angel, but is she? It looks like she put Cooper under the table and wont let him out.

CHRISTMAS PARTY

Today the sponsoring school gave Neinas their Christmas party. Instead of having kaos in the hallways, they sit up different areas in the school where the kids would go. Right as soon as the other schools arrived, I got called to the Principal's office. I ended up being the schools photographer. I ran around the school all day trying to get some good pictures.

In the cafeteria they had it sit up to give each child a t-shirt and bag of candy.

From there they went to the hallway and sang some songs.

Each child got to see Santa Clause. They also got to go into the gym and hear the choir sing. By noon his class was able to sit down and eat. They brought pizza and juice.

Round # ?

I was awaken about 1:30 this morning with sirens from the fire trucks. The sirens just stopped and I knew the house next door was on fire again. I jumped out of bed and ran outside to see what was happening because I couldn't see no fire from the bedroom windows. Sure enough there was a fire but it was on the other side of the house this time. I'll have to look back and see how many times so far this house has been on fire, I'm thinking 4 maybe 5.

I went back and looked the magic number is 4.

Chelsea Skydiving

Chelsea finally sent some pictures of her skydiving adventure. Below is the plane she jumped out of.

She's getting all strapped up to get ready for her jump. She looks happy now, just wait.
This is Reggie and Justin a couple of friends that also jumped.

This is where she got pushed out of the plane. Check out the face she aint smiling anymore, she's terrified.
Now she's ok again, no scared look anymore. She's absolutely crazy. A view of the city from above.

Safely on the ground

Thanksgiving Day

This is our Thanksgiving day, I stayed home and went to mom & dads, while John took Alex to his parents house. Before we had dinner the kids were playing Guitar hero, and then they showed Danny how to play.

The cooks are in the kitchen ( ha, ha). They had Kurt carving the turkey, and the rest of them were getting the other stuff set out, while I set back and took pictures. Then I was first in line so I could get more pictures of the rest of them getting their food.

Time to eat, why do they stop when the camera comes out?

Now after dinner and the clean up crew gets done we get out a puzzle. The doctor told mom to exercise her brain and puzzles was one of the ways to do that. We've been trying to get her to work the puzzles with us, she does some but would rather watch. It looks as though all she is exercising is her mouth, chewing up that gum.