Christmas 2014 and Annie's Homecoming!!!

We had a wonderful Christmas season!  Below I am at a Christmas breakfast with my siblings that live here in the area.  Always fun to be with them and catch up!

Christmas morning we had fun watching these three little ones open their presents from Santa.

The rest of the family came over between 10 and 11 am.  We took lots of pictures.  I think my picture with my grandkids below turned out pretty good!  Love them all so much!

We also got one of the kids with their families on the stairs like we used to when they were little.

Then we took the family pictures:)

We all got to talk with Annie on Christmas which was a treat.  Kim made us a yummy breakfast and the cousins exchanged gifts, then the siblings exchanged gifts, and we gave our gifts to our children and grandchildren, and they gave their gifts to us.  

When the gift exchanging was all over we had a nice dinner together and visited.  It was a lovely Christmas!  The picture below is what we woke up to Christmas morning.  We hadn't had snow in weeks and then this.  It snowed all day so we definitely had a white Christmas:)

 

Five days after Christmas and one day after her birthday on Dec. 30th Annie returned home from her mission!  It was one of the sweetest days of my life!!  Words can't express the joy I felt that day!  Alyse helped me decorate the house and hang her welcome home sign on the garage.

All the family gathered at the airport to welcome her home.  We had some great welcome home signs there for her! We were all so excited!!

That airport was filled with lots of love!!

Annie loved meeting her new niece and seeing all her nieces and nephews and siblings again!

She was just glowing!!! below is her name tag in Tahitian.

After the airport we all returned to our home and had a birthday party for Annie with a Twenty Two theme.

I spent hours cutting out 22's that were all over the kitchen.  And we played the Taylor Swift song Twenty Two as Annie walked into the house:)

The family with Annie.

Annie had brought everyone home beautiful shell leis.  Some of them are pictured above.  She loves the people of Tahiti and they loved her as evidenced by the beautiful shell and pearl jewelry they gave her before she left. After her birthday party we went in the family room and had Christmas with her. I am so grateful for her missionary service and so grateful to have her safely home!!!  it will be a happy New Year!

Thanksgiving and other Things:)

We are starting out with cute Annie today.  She is serving on the very beautiful but so very tiny island of Maupiti.  She says they can ride their bikes around the whole island in an hour.  She is happy and working hard.  She loves the people on this tiny island so much and says the ward is wonderful!  Below is a picture of her and her companion wearing leis that the ward made for them.

A little harbor.

Below is Annie on Thanksgiving.  She and her companion celebrated by making crepes in the shapes of turkeys.  She returns home on Dec.30 and we are so excited to see her!!! 

I loved watching this cute little guy finish up his indoor soccer season.  Good job Warren!

The day before Thanksgiving we got to see our oldest granddaughter perform in the ballet of Molly Mouse.  It is the cutest version of the Nutcracker that I have ever seen.  She was a snowflake this year and was awesome!!!

Below is some of the family who came to watch her dance.  We couldn't convince the others to be in the picture.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  It was our year to have the married kids come.  Below is me with cute Ruby who is growing so fast!

The whole family with the food!  A bigThanks to all my kids who helped so much!

The little cornucopias that were our favors.

Having dinner.

Cute Kaitlyn with the fruit turkey.

Grandkids:)

Grandkids and the threesome of Sister missionaries who joined us for dinner. One Sister is from England, one is from Australia, and one is from Tonga.

April had me take pictures of her family for her Christmas card.  That is always an adventure!  These are the best we got:)

I hope Dec. doesn't go by quite as fast as Nov. did.  It seemed like I blinked and it was over.