Christmas Memories of 2008

Mom and Girls

Cate and Caleb in Christmas Clothes Lauren and Candace
Catelynn and Candace
The Pierson Children
Candace, John, Chris and Lauren

The Ballards

The Cousins...

Gabby holding Brinley and Alex

Caleb and his new bike

New PJ's on Christmas Eve

This year Casey and I were asked to housesit and dogsit for the Schroeder's for the Holidays. They have a nice beautiful home that was able to provide enough room for my family to have a very merry Christmas together. The day never seemed to end with presents and good food and more presents and more good food and the politically incorrect white elephant game. Some of my favorite's on the menu included mom's macaroni and cheese and peppermint ice cream with Dove chocolate syrup...yum yum! My little brother Christopher who is being deployed to Iraq in January paid a surprise visit home for Christmas...although some of us were in on the secret...we wanted to make it special for my mom because we love her and knew this would probably be the last Christmas all together for a long time. To give you a glimpse of the tremendous growth we have had...last year Caleb was the only child and this year he had to share the attention with his little sister and three cousins. So everyone is married accept for Lauren and Nadja (our adopted German exchange student sister who still lives here 10 years later...). Anyways, Christmas 2008 was wonderful and bittersweet. I am so blessed to have such a great family who accept me as their sister despite my imperfections and hopefully would feel confident to call me friend.