Pictures of Christmas 2009
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| Updated: 12/20/09 |
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| MouseOver the doggies and click on
Joxer to get to the pix |
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| Childhood Christmases |
Have a look at a couple of Christmas mornings
when I was a child.
All of these are MouseOver CloseUp
Specials too!! |
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| baby leatherman! |
mIkIE's first car |
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| Mom, Grand Daddy, mIkIE, Doug |
mIkIE owns a garage now |
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mIkIE, Donny and Jon on Christmas
morning
Each Christmas morning, our mom
stood behind the door, watching and waiting to snap a picture
showing our looks of joy and surprise as we first saw our gifts.
However, she usually snapped the picture too soon (or we were
running towards the loot too quickly!), and all we saw were big
floating spots from being blinded by the camera flash. ROFL |
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Christmases Past
with Randy and Jim |
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Randy and the Christmas tree
at the 12th St. house |
Jim helping to put up
the tree
at my 14th St. home |
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Jim and the Herman, the "Christmas Camel" |
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Christmas 2008
The Last Christmas with Jim |
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| Holiday Fun |
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A few days before Christmas, I got a call from my sister-in-law.
It seems my nieces had caught some news reports about the
National Gingerbread House Competition which is being held in
Asheville, NC this year. They wanted to make a gingerbread house
too, and called in an expert - Uncle Mikie. (You might remember
that Jim and I made quite a few gingerbread houses for Christmas
2004. Although I had sworn off ever dealing with gingerbread
again, how could I say no to my nieces. LAUGHING |
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| Kayla and Allie were
armed and ready with smiles, gingerbread dough (that Mom and the
girls mixed up) and assorted candies for the decorating. |
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Using a technique I learned from my Mom when I was a kid, using
crushed up Life Saver candies, the windows in this gingerbread
house had "glass" in the panes instead of just being decorated
on. |
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Kayla's theory of decorating was eat a piece of candy, decorate
with a piece of candy and eat another piece of candy. LAUGHING I
was wondering if we would have enough decorations to doing all
of the decorating that we needed to do. |
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| While Mommy Angie had
helped out with making and baking the gingerbread at the start
of the project, Daddy Donny stepped in to help us some as we
started to put the structure together. |
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| We didn't get it all
together on the first day, because the sugar icing (the "glue")
had to dry to hold the walls together. We also realized that our
"blue prints" had been a little off and we were missing some
wall on each side to cover at the roof. So I went back the next
day to finish up the project. With Mom at work, and Dad busy,
the girls and I whipped up a half-batch of gingerbread. After
baking up our missing house pieces, we made a bunch of
gingerbread cookies to take to the family get-together just
before Christmas. |
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Kayla and I worked hard, while Allie and Don were out shopping,
to ice up all the cookies. |
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MMM, the completed house |
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The house looks tasty enough for Hansel and Gretel |
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Allie, Mikie and Kayla
and the Gingerbread House |
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| Christmas in the Carolinas |
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(December 23) |
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Usually my family gets together for a Christmas gathering on the
weekend before Christmas, so that my brothers can take their
families to the in-laws houses on Christmas Day. This year I
didn't have to hop a plane, but just rode with Mom and Dennis
across town to make the get-together this year. |
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Gathering at my youngest brother's house, we got live holiday
music as we mingled and waited for everyone to arrive. Jenny
played quite well, going through a selection of holiday tunes.
Though Mom wasn't the best singer, she sure did get into the
spirit of the season and had a grand time singing accompanying
Jenny's playing. |
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Before the party, Mom and I spent the afternoon baking cut-out
cookies. Though the first batch didn't turn out so well (the
doggies loved the cookies pieces!), we were able to make a
cookies-on-a-stick table centerpiece. |
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Coming up on supper time, Lisa and Mom started setting out the
cold cuts, cheeses, assorted breads, olives, pickles, chips,
dips, homemade soup, and condiments. It was a huge feast and all
yummy. |
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Angie heats up her homemade spinach dip and cheese dip, while my
brothers "test" it out to make sure it's edible. |
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Hmmm, Lisa seems to be the Holiday Enabler. Here she is tempting
Angie with wine, and later she was talking to Donny about his "crackberry" |
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When the food finally got all set out, it didn't take any
encouraging to get Nana and Dennis to start the line moving
along. |
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| You can barely see Allie there to
the left of Kayla, but this is a picture of Allison,
Kayla, and Jenny filling up their plates before heading off into
the dining room to eat. |
The boy, Jonathan and Jackson, sat
down on the end kitchen island with me to eat their meal |
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The Donald Bivens Family
Angie, Kayla, Allison, and Donald |
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| Jon and Lisa |
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Nearly the whole family gathered around as the gifts were being
passed out.
Starting at the top left and going clockwise
Jon, Jonathan, Jackson, Celia, Dennis, Nana, Allison, Donny, and
Kayla |
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While passing out the presents,
the girls brought me my gift bag from Nana. |
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MouseOver for a mIkIE CloseUp |
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| Christmas @ the Beach |
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(December 25-28) |
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Even though I was back living in town for Christmas, I went out
of town for the Christmas weekend |
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Jack hangs Christmas lights out on the balcony |
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Click here to see all the pictures from my trip to
Myrtle Beach
for the Christmas weekend |
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| Christmas Presents |
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I got some nice
presents this year
a bag of Reese's and a Radio Shack gift card
a Cocker Spaniel keychain and a personalized sweat shirt
a digital photo frame and a tin Coca-Cola bank
and a trip to Myrtle Beach
(not pictured is the carpet cleaner I bought for myself) |
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| December, 2009 |
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