Was wondering why my pictures come out in the opposite order that I pick them, then I realized that it's like the blog itself, it starts from the bottom and runs upwards. So here's Kip and me under our tree. He has been the official tree-picker-outer since he was about 5 and picked a perfect one. This year we had rearranged the living room, and the coffee table is temporarily against the wall. So we got a short tree and set it up on the coffee table. Looks good, but the ornaments are crammed into a smaller space; in fact we didn't have room for several of the less sentimental ornaments.We had a quiet Christmas morning at our house; Santa was very generous, as usual. Kip's big present this year was Rock Band for his Play Station 2, with the drumset, microphone and guitar (which he already had, from Guitar Hero). I was excited to rock out with him, and we couldn't help but get silly for a photo op... Lon got me a pair of diamond earrings, and I got him a chainsaw. It caused him to make noises like Tim "The Toolman" Taylor, ha ha. Two days later, we drove up to Rocky Ridge and exchanged gifts with the Child family. You can see that Allan is hanging in there just fine.
Saturday night Ruth threw a party for Charlie's 50th birthday. Colby & Kathy came with us and brought their boys, who had a blast playing ping pong against the big kids. Kip and Emylee and Devon (Ralph's daughters) switched off as Ayden and AJ's opponents, and also played Guitar Hero with Sam. Meanwhile, the adults lounged around upstairs, like Ruth here, or hung out in the kitchen, like people tend to do at parties... Brian & Kathy were there, and we joked that it was the second time we had seen each other in a year, since they had also been at Lon's surprise party last March. As usual, the food was great, and as usual, Kip didn't want to leave!
