Happy Holidays!!!

The other day I was really industrious and I tackled my shelf in the closet. As I pulled things off the shelf, I started finding tons of push-pins. I remembered that Rhonda got a container of these one year for her birthday, and occasionally the container spilled (Rhonda's shelf is above mine). Therefore, over time, all of her pushpins ended up on my shelf. So as I was cleaning I put every single pushpin on the back of our door (our door is covered in cork-board. They sat there for a few days, then one night Rhonda was gone when I went to bed so I decided to write her a message:

 

In the morning I found this message in reply:

 It's a good thing we can still communicate with each other! When I talked to Rhonda about it she laughed and said that even in pushpin my handwriting is the same.

We had Thanksgiving this year! This was the first year that we didn't go to the Huber Thanksgiving. We had our own family Thanksgiving dinner. It was nice, we just relaxed and did things in our own time frame.

These are the people who came:

 

 The Guthries: Alan, Marie, Grace, Julie, and Kyle (It was Kyle's first Thanksgiving)

The Guthries: Erik, Stacy, Jack, and Lucy

 The Omerzas: James, Rachel, and Jill

The Guthries: Mom, Dad, Linda, Brad, Scott, Rhonda, Anna, and Marcie

We had a grand time. Jill was a good helper carrying in food. Luckily I got this picture right before a bee flew in front of her. I thought we were going to lose the veggie tray! She took off running!

We had our traditional rocket making and launching tradition (I fell asleep for round two so we didn't get any pictures of the other kids or the neighbor kids).

 My mom made a Turkey pinata. It was great fun. Jack helped make it the day before. He was so excited for it on Thanksgiving that he sat in the car for 45 minutes waiting to come to Grandma's.

 (don't worry I think Grace and Jill are telling secrets)

 Marie had a fun turkey craft with toilet paper tubes for everyone to do. Grace turned hers into a pinata, she's rather ingenious!

 Later in the evening our cousins came to visit with us since we didn't make it over there. We had round two of pie, talk about death!

 On Friday, as per tradition, Christmas was set up.

Sometimes I wonder if having Nativity's at the children's level is a good idea. We come up with too many stories for how they end up.

Here's the story for this one:

The wisemen are slightly confused as to where to go and what to do so Joseph is giving them guidance. Mary's decided to go take care of the animals while the men converse, and to find out where the donkey went. The donkey (that you can't see) wandered off because he has been kicked out of his stable, and that's not fair. Afterall, he was there first! Meanwhile, the baby is all by itself, and nobody's watching him.

Merry Christmas! I hope that you're celebrating the seasons with your favorite holiday traditions, and spending time with lots of family!!

To all our college friends, GOOD LUCK WITH FINALS!!!