Monday, January 23, 2017

Fa La La La La.....and Happy New Year!

Realizing I haven't finished up posting about our Christmas festivities. Thankfully, I have a few pictures to remind me since its almost a month later.

We enjoyed a lovely Christmas Eve service at church. Later that evening, we opened up the traditional PJ's and ornaments from Adam's mom. 
Heath - a turtle. Tate - a chicken. Landon - a penguin.

Sigh. I have bunny ears in so many pictures.
On Christmas morning, we opened gifts at home with just our little family. Then we headed to church for a short and simple service. With not having any family gatherings over the Christmas weekend, we were extra grateful to have a church that had so many opportunities to gather together and worship and remember what the season is really about.

Then we came home and set up Skype Christmas with Adam's mom and stepdad....and Adam's sister and husband.  His techy expertise allowed us to cast it onto our TV and split screen it. This is the first Christmas that we did not get together with them in person. We had shipped gifts to one another and opened them over an internet connection.
South Dakota, Washington DC, Indiana.....a lot of distance. 
Amazing what technology can allow us to do these days. 
We were thankful that we could do that, but it was definitely a little sad signing off and realizing that was it for our Christmas with them when we usually spend at least a day or two together. 

On the day after Christmas, we headed to Grand Rapids for a quick gathering with the Willis extended family.  No pictures, but a nice time. And then we brought back from GR one of our international students from last year for the week to stay with us. 

Heath gladly gave up his room for an overnight guest and bunked in his brothers' room (a dream come true for him).  And then Adam's dad and stepmom resided in it for a couple of nights right after that.  We enjoyed having them stay for a couple of nights, but look forward to when we can offer better accommodations for guests (guestroom in the basement is in progress!).  They were here for New Year's Eve and everybody except Heath, managed to stay up til midnight. He made it to 11:20 and then asked if he could be put to bed.  We played games, made homemade ice cream in our ice cream ball, watched a movie, and clinked some bubbly apple cider in plastic glasses at midnight.



Overall, our holidays in our new home were nice.  Definitely a different feel than in the past with not getting to see some family and not doing any major hosting - both of which we missed and were a bit sad about. But it was a very low-key and low-stress time.....which was enjoyed.