Christmas in Indiana

This year we celebrated Christmas in Indianapolis with Terry's brothers & family. It was an easy 9 hour drive (since we stopped half way in St. Louis at the Hampton Inn due to our late start - I took too long to pack). We stayed at Lowell & Sherry's house since their 6 bedroom house has room for everyone. Even Terry's dad, Paul, and Sherry's mom, Oma, joined us this year. On Christmas Eve after some last minute shopping with Terry's brother Doug, I joined the women for the candlelight service at E91 Street Church which was definitely a highlight! Then we had a delicious dinner of beef stew, followed by the annual reading of "Twas the Night Before Christmas" before the kids each opened one gift. After the kids were all snug in their beds with visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads, I noticed that it was snowing out the window, covering everything with a fresh blanket of white. How perfect!

On Christmas day we spent the morning opening stockings and presents. Then Doug picked up his kids from Chicago and Sherry's brother Ron (Taylor University's football coach) and his family joined us for a wonderful Christmas feast! The rest of our visit in Indy was a blur of doing puzzles, playing Trivial Pursuit, painting an annual Christmas village house, eating, going to see the 3rd Narnia movie (don't recommend this one), taking pictures with my new digital SLR camera, and visiting with old Patton junior high classmate Mark Pishon and his kids who lives in the area and stopped by for lunch.

Time goes by too fast. Here I am back at home wishing I had another week of relaxing days spent with family. Thankfully the boys are out of school this week and Terry and I have flexible schedules with our jobs so we'll have some more vacation time as we count down the last few days of the year. The rest of the week will be busy with more celebrating: Terry's turning 53 on the 30th, New Year's Eve (a casino night party at our house with friends) and bowl games on New Year's Day. Then Terry and I promised ourselves we'd tackle a closet cleanup project this week and I'd like to redecorate our "office" into a music room so I can hang the new Haines Brothers' poster that Doug made Terry for Christmas. I also promised the boys I'd take them to Snow Creek for snowboarding and skiing on Jan 3rd before they head back to school. I guess I'll wait till they all go back to school before I take down the Christmas decorations.

Where does the time go?