Week Before Christmas and All is Well

First and foremost, I want to THANK everyone for their prayers for my dad. His surgery went well, and he is recovering very nicely. Yeah!! Dad!!! I don't have the Christmas pictures uploaded yet, so this will be a pre-Christmas Post. (Mikeys partially to blame, because all the pictures are on his phone!) Our grass here is very very thick. It does not make for good putting like Bermuda in AZ. Caleb loves to golf, and misses the putting. So Mikey built him his own putting green. They got plywood, cut it, weather proofed it, and covered it in putting green material. Caleb has been outside every. day. for. hours. and. hours. I think he likes it. The weekend before Christmas Zachary was in a parade with his cub scouts. It was a lot of fun, and just down the street from us. The people in the parade threw out candy to all the kids. So did Zachary. He only kept 3 pieces in his pocket for himself. Caleb had fun waving to everyone.

Zachary loved the whole experience and wishes they had parades all the time. I grew my very first potatoes! I just took some store bought ones, that seemed a little old, stuck them in the ground, and a few months later, we have our own! Look at this poor butterfly. Mike went to work, and came home with this on the car. Almost in perfect condition, except for being dead. So he actually drove around with it for a few more days. The kids called it the 'cars tattoo'. Christina is getting to where she is enjoying doing a little cooking since she is in a culinary class in school. Who knows, maybe her and Uncle Owiee will have their own restaurant someday. The boys had alot of fun setting up the Christmas tree and hanging up the ornaments on it. I do have pictures of them decorating somewhere, but they must be on Mikeys phone. Mike of course got his yearly task of setting up Christmas lights outside, while I set up the candles and decorations inside. Christina supervised it all. While I was gone the dinner job fell to Mikey. They had Mac N Cheese probably more nights than he will admit, but he did some homemade cooking as well. This is meatball subs. I explained a few tricks to him, and they kids said it was sooooo yummy! While in AZ my brother Frank had a going away party and a culinary school graduation party at his house. He will be moving here the middle of Feb.

This is Frank and I with my cousin Trina. We had fun growing up together. It was so wonderful to see her again. Our 3 generations. Gramma Ann, Mom and me. Aren't we beautiful? Mom, Uncle Bruce, his fiance Mauri, (Jan 24 is the wedding! Congratulations!) It was a fun party. There were alot more than this that showed up, and apparently it ran till 6am. I'm glad I went back to moms that night! Mikey, the kids and I are headed this morning to Naples thru Friday. As usual, Mike has out done himself. We will have a private beach cottage on a private island. Oh my! Not sure if there will be WiFi or Cell phones, but if so, I will try very hard to get him to send me all the Christmas photos so I can post a Christmas blog before the New Year one!