Givhans Ferry State Park, Ridgeville, South Carolina (that’s where the coach is!)
The Peck Home, Uniontown, Ohio (that’s where we slept)
God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. ~ Philippians 2:9-11
Here’s where our home sat, all alone for ten days.
Blaine was hoping for his two front teeth for Christmas, but then realized . . . . . he already had them. I wanted a hippopotamus for Christmas, but I didn’t get one. We got no chimney flue and no front door big enough to bring him in, and no garage to take care of him either. I guess Santa knows best. ☹
Despite that, we still managed to have a wonderful, blessed, fun-filled Christmas week, albeit totally mixed up. We enjoyed Christmas Day on Saturday, the 22nd with my family and our kids and grandkids.
This is my side of the family:
Back row: Mom, Harper, Kyle, Shena, Kelli, Logan, Lance
Front: Chris, Max, Kade, me, Cody, Alex, Blaine
And the crazy fun picture!
That’s me and my mom!
I can only hope to look half as good as her when I’m her age!
Waiting for everyone else to arrive!
Oooh . . . what’s in here?
Oh! Penguins!!
FYI – penguins are like goldfish crackers but in penguin shape.
The kids love ’em!
Two-year-old Harper took this picture herself!
“Daddy! Say cheese!”
Reindeer games . . . .
Those two pairs of boots were the hit of the evening!
They wouldn’t take them off!
Our resident techie
Haha! I’ve got your phone and you can’t have it!
Our Christmas Eve church service was on Sunday night the 23rd at our eldest son Chris’ church (Mosaic). It was a wonderfully blessed evening, and was attended by our three parents, our two sons and daughters-in-law and three out of five grandchildren.
Then we celebrated Christmas Eve on Monday, the 24th with Blaine’s family, our kids and grandkids. At least that was normal, except we almost forgot to serve the traditional shrimp cocktail. In fact, half the people were gone before we remembered to get it out. Ooops!
Blaine’s Family:
Back row: Jessica, Shena, Kade, Kyle, Harper, Chad, Dawn, Barb
Middle: Chris, Ron, Joan, Brian, Blaine
Front: me, Max, Cody, Alex, Maddie, Brody
The crazy, fun picture!
A rousing game of Left-Right-Center!
Jessica, Chris
Cody, Alex, Max
Harper, Blaine & Kade
There they are!
Our five grandchildren!
Blaine’s Mom reads “The Night Before Christmas” every year.
And Christmas Day was very quiet (and abnormal for us) as we enjoyed one last visit with my mom watching ‘Elf” and talking and then we packed up to go home.
Christmastime is sooo much livelier with small children around! We sang “Shark Babies” (that was a new one for us, and the two and three-year-old had no problem correcting us when we got it wrong.), and played ‘duck-duck-goose’ in a tiny section of what remained of living room floor space. We also purchased a new game to play with the older kids and adults. I can’t remember the proper name, but it’s a ‘shocking game’, where four people hold these handles with buttons on top, listen to eerie music and watch the light in the middle flash green. When the music stops and the light turns red, you push your button. The last one to do so gets a small electrical shock. Sadistic, I know. But after watching our sons grow up enjoying such things, I knew it would be a hit with the guys! It was. 😊
The shocking game was a big hit with the guys – – just as I knew it would be. : )
Shocking Game reprise! : )
There was also a lot of running around and wrestling that went on with all the kiddos!
We took two of them to enjoy Grinch pancakes at IHOP and drive around to see Christmas lights.
Cody opted for the Grinch breakfast – minus the grinchy part.
Max
The Grinch meal at IHOP!
We played jewelry dress up with the youngest two, when I brought my old stuff (mostly from high school) to their home.
There’s something you don’t normally see as part of Blaine’s wardrobe!
This is what happens if you get too close to the floor!
Take a close look at Blaine. What do you see that you’ve never seen before?
What’s so funny?!?!?!
I love reading to kids!
Kyle’s Heritage Scrapbook.
The super-secret project I was working on.
Chris got his too, but no pictures of that . . . : (
Working on the super-secret project before we left for Ohio.
Here’s a couple of images from the book:
Wow! Can you believe that’s us?!
This one’s even more interesting! : )
If you want to see the books, you’ll have to ask Chris or Kyle to share them with you. They were just too big to have the boys cart around to everyone’s house. Not to mention the time it would take to look at them.
Awwww . . . . .
And we re-visited the ‘Surprise box’ Christmas/New Year’s tradition with my family. It all began many years ago when my aunt (Mom’s sister who always catalog shopped) started buying those ‘mystery boxes’ they sell in the catalogs. You know, the ones that they sell for $10 and you don’t know what they’ll put in them? Well, she’d buy one for each family and then we’d promote our items in the best, most elaborate light in an effort to trade for what we really wanted. As the years progressed and my aunt passed, the boxes evolved into gathering up your own stuff that you didn’t want. More evolving and it became just bringing back the junk stuff from the previous year that you’d ended up with, and that still nobody wanted. And so we began buying gifts to put in our box. Even more evolving as they became more and more expensive, until we finally pulled the plug. So it’d been quite a few years since we’d had a surprise box exchange. My brother wanted to revive it this year, so we did.
Now, as you can guess, we personally didn’t really have much to put in our box to give away because we don’t travel around with excess stuff anymore. I did however, have a pair of shoes I was wanting to get rid of . . . . but it turned out that no one seemed to want to walk a mile in my shoes. I don’t understand, because they’ve been to some great places! Hmmmm . . . .
It was also difficult for us to trade much, because we live so ‘stuff-free’ now. But it was fun to watch and we made a few trades. The entire event really was enjoyable, as a budding salesman emerged in Chris’ youngest son, Max.
Max donning some of the surprise box items. : )
Most of our ten days was filled with either preparations (i.e. wrapping and completing gifts) or spending time with family. It was quite a whirlwind and we can hardly believe it’s over already!
And Mom and I spent a day together running errands and taking her to lunch for her November birthday.
Did you know Brussels sprouts grow like this??
I didn’t! But I suppose it makes sense.
My mom’s birthday dinner.
We ate at Kasai . . . .
. . . . . and she tried sushi for the first time.
And she liked it!
As much as we’ll miss everyone, we were also anxious to get back home and on to the next adventure!
Givhans Ferry State Park, Ridgeville, South Carolina
When we left Uniontown, it was 6:27am and we had an ETA for Ridgeville, South Carolina of 4:22pm. There was little traffic and no slow downs until we hit Charlotte, North Carolina. Errrrck! Almost stand-still lanes. And that continued off and on until we were able to turn off towards Ridgeville.
The coldest temperature on our drive was 23 degrees in the mountains of West Virginia, but by the time we reached Charlotte, North Carolina, it was a balmy 63.
Also in West Virginia, there was this incredible weather-thing going on! It was cold and foggy and the trees were covered in frost and the clouds looked incredible! And yes, I realize there are too many (not so great) pictures of this spectacular God Moment we were privileged to enjoy, but it will help us remember it!
This is Charleston, West Virginia and that’s the Capitol building in the background.
You can get an idea of how brilliant the Capitol building dome is!
Snow! : )
This drive is about three hours too long. I tried to nap some, which was more like dozing. You know how it is, once you actually make the decision to take a nap, the radio’s too loud, various body parts start feeling uncomfortable, the sun’s too bright and your mind starts racing and suddenly, napping becomes impossible.
The drive itself was fairly uneventful, with the exception of one major thing. A deer was hit by a semi. It was absolutely awful and something my mind will forever intermittently conjure up. It ranks second in my list of awful things I’ve witnessed – right behind the suicide jumper we saw lying on an Arizona highway years ago . . . .
We made two stops (lunch, dinner and gas) which amounted to about 45 minutes total, and we arrived home at 5:56pm. All that traffic cost us roughly 45 minutes. Not as bad as it seemed. 😊
I had a little tickle in the back of my throat most of the way home.
Oh no . . . .