Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season! I can't believe how soon Christmas came and went this year! It feels like it was just Thanksgiving last week! We had a pretty quiet Christmas. Somehow we both had Christmas Eve and Christmas off this year. For Christmas Eve we drove up to Fort Wayne with Ash to see Dad and have a nice Christmas Eve dinner with him. We spent Christmas Day together. Joe's big gift this year was a toolbox we bought during Thanksgiving Day sales. I made him wait till Christmas to take them out of the box and put it together so he ran out to the garage as soon as we were done opening gifts! :) I got an additional Christmas gift when he cleaned out the garage and arranged it to find the perfect spot for his tools! :)

The kitties have loved the Christmas tree as well as all the ornaments and rattling them around :)

We realized we had been so busy that by the time we were stopping to get food for Christmas Day on Christmas Eve that all of the stores were closed! I was so disappointed that night... but we made the best of it and had some wonderful sushi for dinner...mmm! :) I think we could make it a tradition! :) I was suprised at the amout of people out searching for food on Christmas.

We also decided to go see Avatar in 3D after we'd heard so many good things about it. It was a great movie and fun to see it at the IMAX theatre. The place was packed! Sorry for the bad pictures... they are all from my iPhone since I forgot to charge my camera battery.

Saturday morning Joe had to go back to work but that evening we went over to Mark and Cindi's to see the whole Ketcham crowd. It was great to see family I hadn't see in a long time. I'm glad Uncle Dan, Aunt Kathy, Hannah and Rebecca made the drive out here! I hadn't seen my cousins for years!

This weekend we will see Joe's family for Christmas! Yay!

The new job is going well. I'm still doing orientation on day shift. It's been nice feeling halfway normal again, but it's hard to get things done around here with us both doing full time day shift. I'm actually looking forward a little to going back to night shift! (I know, I can't believe I just said that!)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Thanksgiving

Thursday we had a great afternoon in Fort Wayne with Joe's side of the family at Steve and Sue's. I wish I had gotten my camera out to actually take some pictures there! We had a full house at our house on Friday for Thanksgiving. Dad and Grandma & Grandpa came down from Fort Wayne and Kirstin and Nathan came up for the weekend from Atlanta. It worked out great. Everyone pitched in for food and it was all wonderful! Good enough we are still even eating the leftovers!! MMmmmm... We even got to Skype with the Drakes in Colorado... despite a few problems with the microphone it was still great to "see" them! :) I definitely have a lot of things to be thankful for this year. Here are a few pics from the afternoon.

Kirstin and Nathan brought Marley (their dog) so this is where Parker spent the weekend hiding in our bathroom....

Joe has been working on the Christmas lights. Its fun to finally have a house to put things up in and decorate! So far we are only the second house in the neighborhood to have any colored lights up.... hopefully the neighbors don't all think it looks tacky! Joe's been up on the roof multiple times now which seems to be scaring all of our older neighbors. They have come over a few times to help "hold the ladder" once they see him up there. This weekend I was on the driveway while Joe was climbing up there to hang the wreath and I heard the older lady across the street come out her front door and yell to her husband, "Jaaaaackkkk... he's on the roof again!!!". LOL... at least they are watching out for him.