More Pictures from our Visit

Mutti reads a story to Sam and Emily before bedtime:


Emily, Stella and Sam enjoy a Peanut Butter Ball New Years Day. Barbara made them as a treat for a get together she went to with friends the night before.


Chinese Checkers. On an earlier visit this year my parents discovered Grandmother loves to play Chinese Checkers, and she's really good at it too. I think both times we played over the long weekend, she won! It's a good game to play with all the different ages in the house - 17 months - 91 years - once you hit about 6, age doesn't really equal skill level and you can have 6+ players (some little ones require a tag team effort to finish the game!), another plus when there were between 14-18 people in the house at any given point during the visit.


Here we are with the six great grandchildren for a picture with the Grandparents an hour or so before we had to give our hugs goodbye.

Meet Me in St. Louis

My Dad's birthday is the 28th of December and so on years when we don't spend Christmas with my parents, we do our best to spend the 28th through New Years with my family to celebrate his birthday and the new year.

This year Daddy's parents decided to spend the 8 days following Christmas day with my parents, adding addition incentive for us to make the trip East to visit them. We arrived at my parents house very late Friday night just in time to spend all day Saturday (Daddy asked that we postpone his birthday a day to allow all of us traveling to arrive and so no one felt rushed with Mom and Dad's standing Friday night temple assignment) celebrating.

The celebrations started with Donuts as a mid-morning dessert after breakfast. Then a fun take-out for lunch from a variety of restaurants - oh so yummy! - and who wants to try and take four generations of people to one sit down restaurant? We figured take-out would be simpler, more fun, and just as cost effective.

After lunch, Daddy had requested a family music session with the strings, piano, and singing. Something we haven't really done in about 10 years. My sister's Suzanne and Mary Ann played an amazing piece attributed to Mozart called Der Spiegel. You put the single sheet of music on a table with the violinists facing each other and they start playing - each at what is the top of the sheet of paper from their vantage point. It's amazing and beautiful and fun!



Our little family with the addition of Joe's sweet girlfriend kd played Happy Birthday on the English Cracker Horns we got Christmas Day at Diane's (hopefully we'll get a YouTube video of that going in the next couple days). Everyone got a hoot out of that little surprise performance. Then Joe broke out the cello and we sang Christmas Carols.

Daddy's birthday cakes were a huge Homemade Apple Pie (made using my Aunt LaRee's recipe) and a decadent White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory.