Looking forward to a New Year

Well, Christmas 2008 has now come and gone. Our families had a wonderful time celebrating the season. We started celebrating with our traditional get together with the families of our best friends. We have been celebrating Christmas with them for the past 26 years. Emily, Rita, and I have our picture made together each year and are now including our girls (sorry guys - you got left out again!) and grandkids in the pictures. We always have fun at this annual event. It's fun to watch how we change and our families grow!

Rita, Kay and Emily

...with the girls

...the girls and grandkids

Next, we celebrated with the Petzelt family. We all enjoyed having lunch together at our house then watching all the kids open their gifts. 

Dorothy with her boys

...and all of her grandchildren

Christmas night was fun with 2 little ones, 6 adults, and 2 dogs in the house. It was hectic but I did manage to get a few posed pictures. Michael arrived dressed like a snowman Christmas evening!

David and Summer with Kennedy

Jill and Sam with Michael

and Lucy got the leftovers!

John and I are now looking forward to celebrating a quite New Year's Eve at home.

A New Christmas Tradition

Even though I have lived in Atlanta my entire life, I don't remember ever riding the Pink Pig! Well, I finally got my chance. Jill and I took Michael to Lenox Square to see Santa and ride the Pink Pig. How fun! We talked about making this a new Christmas tradition. Michael sat in Santa's lap. Even though he didn't smile for the picture at least he wasn't screaming!. There weren't many people at the mall - we didn't have a line to see Santa nor to ride the Pink Pig. The messy weather may have played a part in that. We had a wonderful day together!

Michael with Santa at Lenox Square Mall

'

The Pink Pig entrance

Jill and Michael on the Pink Pig

Jill and Michael

My little Christmas present!

Christmas will be different this year

This will be our first Christmas with grandchildren. Jill and Sam will have Michael (5 months) and David and Summer will have Kennedy (2 years) when they are here on Christmas. How exciting!! It has been a long time since little bitties have been around on Christmas. We are really looking forward to them being here. We finally got all of the Christmas decorations out of the basement but I haven't even begun to get anything done with them yet. I really need to get busy. Jill and I are going to take Michael to ride the Pink Pig next week. Neither of us have ever been - hard to believe, growing up in Atlanta and never been to the Pink Pig! Here are some pictures of Christmas in years past to enjoy while I get myself together to get new ones up.

Jill and David with Santa 1988

Jill and David on Christmas morning 2000

Sam, Jill and David Christmas 2004

Traveling

I had a request to post some of the photos from our travels this year. John and I went to Holland and Belgium this spring to see the tulips and to taste some chocolate. We were not disappointed. The tulips were beautiful and the chocolate was decadent!!! 

John outside Leonidas Chocolates in Belgium

Windmills at Kinderdijk, Holland

Keukenhof Gardens, Holland

This fall we traveled through New England to see the leaves turning beautiful, brilliant colors. We traveled through Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York (even though it is not part of New England). Again, we were not disappointed. The weather and the leaves cooperated fully!

Fall color in Maine ...

...and Vermont

You can check out my pictures on my Shutterfly web page:

www.shutterbug2.shutterfly.com

Happy Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with my family at our house on Thursday. The only thing missing was my son David, who had to work and his girlfriend Summer and her daughter Kennedy. It was the first Thanksgiving without David, but with his job as a firefighter, that will probably happen more often now. There were, however, some sad undertones to our family gathering. One of my aunts and a cousin's husband passed away on Tuesday. I can't imagine how sad it would be to lose you mother and husband an hour apart from each other. Attending two funerals in two days ranks up there with one of the saddest things I have ever had to do. I went up to Charlotte, NC with 4 of my cousins and an aunt. While it was a sad occasion, we all had some good bonding with the NC cousins and their families which we had not seen in many years.

Judy, Debbie, Donna (the 2 cousins who lost their mom - Donna also lost her husband), Kay, Cathy, and Sandra

I had planned on putting my Christmas tree up this past weekend, but that did not happen. Hopefully I'll get to it this coming week.

We will celebrate John's 60th birthday on Saturday. I love him so much! He is such a good person and so supportive of everything I am interested in. We'll do something special to celebrate!