Dishes

I just finished doing the dishes.  Let me say that I loathe doing dishes.  It's probably the worst household type job for me.  I also don't enjoy cleaning the bathroom or doing laundry, but for some reason the dishes really get to me.  We don't have a dishwasher so it's a pretty time consuming activity...especially when I wait until we have no forks or knives left to wash everything up LOL!  Also, our sink doesn't have a garbage disposal, so the joy of getting all the food pieces taken care off falls to me. YUCK!! Dishes stink :-( The above picture isn't my actual sink, but it might as well be.

Christmas Joy

Whew!! What a fun-filled Christmas! We started off our Christmas celebrations with a party at my Grandma Pare's house the week before Christmas. It was nice to visit with all my aunts, uncles and cousins, especially my cousin Alex who has been in Florida doing his Army training/school.  The Lion's winning that night was a bonus! Here is a pic with Ben and his Great-Grandpa.

The following week the kids still had school which was a bit of change for us.  I wasn't thrilled with them being in class right up until Christmas Eve, but now that we have two full weeks off I'm liking the new schedule a bit more!  Ben's swim team the Sea Monsters hosted a swim meet at the Downriver YMCA and my mom was able to see him compete for the first time.  Here's Ben in the 50 M Freestyle Race.

Christmas Eve we have always spent at Ken's dad's house with his sister and her family before going to church.  This year was no different but we were afraid Ben wasn't going to make it due to being under the weather.  He was able to make it to Grandpa Altizer's, and we had a great visit and meal with the Altizer side of the family, but Zach and I dropped Ken and Ben at home before heading to church. Zach did the Advent reading and lighting of the candles and I was in charge of the children's program for our Christmas Eve Service. Our hard work and preparation paid off and both went very well.  All the kids spoke their parts clearly and after we were all done I was relieved!