Happy Valentines Day

I usually have to say that this is a pretty pathetic excuse for a holiday, but this year it some how has been strangely better. Between Jolee coloring Valentine's pictures for Grandparents (hopefully they get there in time) and having our very own singing Valentine on Friday night (A song, a rose, a card and a pie, pretty awesome. We loved it!), I am actually afraid to admit that I am excited for Valentines. We love you all! Wishing you happiness, smiles, and a bit of charity (Definition of Charity from the Bible Dictionary: The highest, noblest, strongest kind of love, not merely affection; the pure love of Christ. It is never used to denote alms or deeds of benevolence, although it may be a prompting motive).

O Christmas Tree

Here goes starting the old game of catch up

Every year for Christmas we go to the tree yard and find the perfect tree. I grew up with plastic trees, Randy grew up chopping down his own tree, so to compromise, the tree yard is where we go. This year Jolee helped us to find the perfect tree.

Randy and Jolee in front of "the perfect tree"




Sarah and Jolee with the tree at home 

Jolee helping to show off our tree

Our tree after decoration

The family. Jolee was getting tired and would play and cry, then play and cry, clearly we thought she was a little bit funny. She got mad at us for laughing.

Us with our presents.

Stealing a kiss while Jolee is focused on her new clapper :)

I, of course, couldn't wait to decorate our tree. It is one of my favorite traditions. I love all of the funny and weird ornaments that we have collected over the years. Each year we look for an original ornament and some sort of Santa ornament. Jolee actually did a great job at not stealing ornaments (too much). She loved staring at the tree. Once she realized that the boxes under the tree were covered in paper, it was a bit more difficult to get her out from under the tree. She actually really enjoyed unwrapping presents and trying to eat the wrapping paper.

Christmas was very enjoyable. We ended up celebrating early because I had to work on Christmas. Randy's favorite gift was his new laptop (I told him he wasn't going to get one, then I sneakily worked it out with my mom and surprized him with it. Thanks again Mom and Dad for helping me :) ). My favorite gift was the magic bullet and my fairy tale book (I love old classic fairy tales, especially ones I have never heard before). I am not sure what Jolee's favorite is. It is between her popping ball toy (not pictured, but I will post more later) from Meg and her bath toys from GrammE and Grandpa. My favorite of her's is her booster seat high chair (it is so much easier to feed her without making a huge mess). Thank-you for our gifts, we love them all, but so much better than gifts is the love of family and friends. This past year was completely full of blessings and love!

The Christmas Spirit

I thought that all of you could use a little christmas reminder. May it help to take some of the commercialism out of the Holiday.


The Christmas Spirit

A plethora of pictures... finally

A Glimpse into the Future

Sarah loves to dress up for halloween. I am not a big fan of dressing up, I guess I grew up and no longer have the flare to dress up. However, I know how much it means to Sarah to dress up, so I do it. This year we had a tough time deciding what to wear. With the decision final, we set about finding the necessary accessories. The time came to prove ourselves, we dressed up and got a lot of double takes. It was really good, we had a hard time recognizing ourselves! 

If you can't guess, we are a senior missionary couple.