Home for Christmas

It's always fun to be with my family at Christmastime. Well, it's fun to be with them anytime.

It doesn't seem like a trip to visit the family without some sort of fun on the river. My mom and I tried the kayaks out first. I barely got wet at all. Success!

Susannah and Adam were a little more wild than we were. He started chasing her.

It was hilarious. I wish I got more of her yelling at him!

This is my dad trying to get in the shot I took above. I cut him out of that one, so I had to get one of just him.Adam - the Giant, came as well. It was fun to do stuff as a whole family.Here's what happened to Adam - his own fault. That's what he gets for acting crazy in a kayak!

Ruffian even got in on the action with a little swimming. He likes to take a little dip when we head down to the river.

The Adams got a little wild and were attacking Susannah on the way home. I'm just glad it wasn't me!

The weather turned really cold not long after our fun at the river. We even got snow on Christmas Eve. My dad got tired of covering his winter tomato plants, so he pulled them up and we all worked to save the tomatoes off the plants.

This is about 1/4 of what we got off during this little time.

Here I am freezing my tail off!

I've also spent a lot of time reading. No, this is not me. Adam and I fought over this book (it's really good), but I'm glad to say that we've both finished it.

Ruffian always gets a present on Christmas. He was happy to get his new little toy, which he promptly destroyed. This shot made us laugh, because it looks like he ate the cotton and it already traveled out the other end. It's not really a far fetched idea, it just hadn't happened . . . yet.

Of course, we played a LOT of games.

Since we had everyone there, we also thought it would be a good idea to take some family pictures. This is probably one of the best ones. We snuck out on the golf course to take these ones.

While unconventional, this is probably everyone's favorite. Susannah played with it a little.

This one's not too bad; we just need to lighten it up a little.

This one was Susannah's idea. I think it looks cool, except Susannah set this one up, (we did these all on a timer) and she had a long way to run to get in the pictures. She just barely made it on this one!

Here's a cute couple one she edited a little.

We didn't end up getting a good one of everyone at the river, but I wanted to post one anyway.

The best pictures at the river were funny ones. We had all the guys jump out on the dock. This is one of our favorites - look at Adam W's face. It also looks like he's about to hit himself in the crotch.

This one is just plain hilarious.

We tried it too. This is one of our favorites, because Mom looks like she's tap dancing or something.

We were going to get a nice "girls shot" and mistakenly gave the camera to Adam W. He wouldn't go where we wanted him to, thus this picture where we're trying to tell him where to go.

I liked this one.

We've also got to include ping pong in our trips. My dad is pretty much the ping pong master. We were playing at the institute one night and I saw something I hadn't seen him do before. He often gives major handicaps, plays with a ridiculously small paddle, closes his eyes, plays on his knees, or even sitting down, but this time he tried laying down. It wasn't his most successful endeavor since he couldn't see the ball until it came off the table, but it was entertaining nonetheless!