Happy New Year!

Today is the last day of 2004 and so tomorrow brings a new year. 2004 has been a good year around our home with all four of us healthy and doing well.

In 2005 Abby will turn 11 and Gabe will turn 9 which is hard to believe. They are both becoming older faster than seems possible.

Tonight we will spend New Year's Eve with our friends the Fries, at their home in Big Lake Minnesota. We will stay overnight and make pizza, play cards, and wear out the kids so we can have some peace and quiet. It has become another of our traditions with them, along with apple orchards in the fall and Christmas tree cutting in the winter. It is really great to have such good friends, and all of our kids together make quite a group. We have the two, but they have four.

Happy New Year to everyone.

If you get our Christmas card, then you have seen this one. Taken at Rush Creek on Thanksgiving Day. 

At Nordeman's Tree farm near Zimmerman Minnesota to choose and cut down our Christmas tree 

Abby and Gabe dressed for Halloween 

Christmas traditions

Today we put up our Christmas tree in our new room. It looks really good in there. We went out and cut it down on the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend with our friends the Fries. This is something we have done with them every year for quite some time. Putting up the tree is always a fun time because all of the memories that go with the ornaments get talked about again. The first thing to come out for us is the Christmas duck. It is this stuffed animal that quacks Christmas tunes. Abby received it as a gift from her great-grandmother Nana Lee when she was 18 months old. It has come out every year since to bring it's quackiness to our Christmas.

Abby has already had her Christmas piano recital, and she did very well. Tomorrow night is the choir program for the kids, with both Abby and Gabe involved in singing.

Bye for now, more on Christmas to come.