"a christmas story" in tropic

Anyone who knows my mother-in-law, Dixie, won't be surprised by this. Anyone who doesn't may be incredulous at the amount of time and effort she puts into her theme parties. Let me just say, she goes all out. And this wasn't just a theme party, it was a theme week. We received invitations weeks ago with instructions, but we had no idea what we were really in for. She spared no amount of time or energy in preparing games, contests, awards, meals, and anything else you can think of to make it incredible. Here are some pictures of the fun. I'm sorry to say I don't have pictures of a couple of the games, the "You'll shoot your eye out" marshmallow shooting contest or the Little Orphan Annie decoder pin challenge. I also missed taking a picture of our Chinese Christmas dinner or the turkey dinner that did not get eaten by the Bumpus' dogs. Thank heavens!

And lest you think that all we did was this theme party for 6 days, let me assure you that there were plenty of other events and activities to delight and fatten all who were there. Here is a sampling of the other goings-on.

I hope you all had as much fun and food as we did this Christmas season. It was truly a wonderful time to spend with our family. I am so thankful for both of our families and the good relationships that we have. We love spending time together and celebrating whatever brings us together. We are blessed to have these great people in our lives!

scrapbook pages

These are the 2009 scrapbook pages for the Coleman family. We do this in both families now instead of exchanging gifts with our siblings. Everyone makes a two page layout and then copies it for everyone else. The parents get the originals (if it's paper scrapbooking) and everyone else gets copies. I make the pages a bit different for the Burbidges and the Colemans, but basically I get it all done in one shot. It's a wonderful album to look back through. I highly recommend it! I especially enjoy it now that I do digital scrapbooking.

graffiti

On the way home from school I got an earful from my kids about how last night someone sneaked onto the school property and graffitied all over the place. Coleman's comment was, "Ya, and it wasn't even good drawing!" Claire said, "Seriously, I mean, if they wanted to write all over our schoolyard why didn't they just write something nice?!" I'm glad my kids don't know why this goes on. Innocence is bliss!