Weeeeee (or should I say wiiiiiiiii) It's Christmas!

Weeeeeeeeee!! / Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!
We had a wonderful family Christmas in all of the traditions that each Christmas is ...

First, a wonderful italian christmas eve dinner at Darold & Robyn's house with
Fred & Sharon, Dean & Jenn, Mark & Lara, Jeanie & Dave, Bobby, Marta, Daulton & Jordyn
and, of course, Dave & Sherrie, Ryan, Drew & Kate, Trey & Sean!

Christmas Morning we started with a reading of the Christmas Scriptures
(which I've posted in the comments in case you'd like to use in future years :o)
Wrastling and Loves, and then the presents ...

Our big gift this year was the Nintendo Wii system,
with which we've been having ball!

After the reading, next came entertainment ... Drew & Sean have always been close,
so Sean egged Drew on for some lovin' wrastles ...

Ryan's gifts this year focused around his love of biking ...
Screamin' yellow jacket & hoodie + some other stuff
Drew's gifts were for his new (used) Jeep Cherokee...
Jumper cables, tire gauge + some other stuff
Drew loved playing Santa this year with big gifts for his family...
New graphing computing calculators for Ryan & Trey,
a new ipod for Sean, a GPS for Dave, and a magic blooming teapot for me!
Trey & Sean waited patiently for the Wii to appear ...

I love my new microwavable slippers from Dave!
Toasty toes on cold days at my desk :)
And then waa-laa the Wii ... first up, Drew for wiring!
(he is THE best!!!)

And let the games begin!!

Rock Band Special Edition ...
Tennis ...
And later in the afternoon & evening...
good friends Brian & Jake came with Jules to exchange gifts and play, too!
Wii had a Merry Christmas
and hope you did as well!!!

In June, I dyed their hair black!

At the beginning of this summer,

Trey & Sean and Brian & Jake wanted to have their hair dyed
from Red, Blond & Brown to BLACK ...
No problem ~ A a box of $3 hair dye each and we were in business!
We were all pleasantly surprised at how easy and fun it was :)

Dave took some pictures of the big event:

Sean's blond locks went first ...
The smell!
But I'm looking good, right?
Okay Trey, time for you ...
This is going to be fun, can we all be part of it?
That black looks sooo different with that fair skin ...
(I love seeing Jules laughing in the background!)
Jake was ready to jump in the chair next ...
Great patience ...Looking good ...Alright Brian, it's all you ...
Yep, that's the look ...
Really, is this what I signed up for? It's pretty stinky ...Trey & Sean with their new locks ...And the whole crowd ~ Sean, Brian, Trey & Jake ...
The brothers looking like brothers!
Rock On!

Trey, Brian & Jake are back to their original colors,
but Sean is still sporting quite the duo-tone as can be seen in the post below :)

We had a great end of season trip to Lake Pueblo ...

We had a great end of season trip to lake Pueblo recently ...
Friend Sam was able to join Sean, Trey, Dave and I as we met Robyn & Darold.
We rented slips for the boats and on a cool afternoon,
Dave & Darold re-carpeted the boat trailers which they'd been planning for a year or so.
They came out really nice.
We also had a couple of hikes to the water tower and threw rocks off our favorite cliff.

Just before this trip, Drew got me the new Olympus camera under warranty as mine
that he gave to me as a birthday present before my trip to China in 2006 was no longer focusing.
I'm tickled with the picture quality of this point-n-shoot
(Olympus FE-350 shown HERE at amazon.com)

Tickled ... yes that's the right word.
And all of my poor subjects this weekend had to put up with me snap, snap, snapping.
They were good sports.
I like to tell myself that someday they'll thank me for it ...
but that might be simply wishful thinking. Oh well, at least I enjoy it!

So without further ado, here are but a fraction of my photos ...

Breakfast ...


Lake Pueblo ~ tubing & waterskiing ...


Lunch and hanging out ...


An "escape pod" adventure to shore & hiking ...


Back at the boat dock ...


And the return to camp ...


Camera play ...

Automatic 'smile finder' setting ...

Re-carpeting the boat trailers ...


Hiking ...

Camera Battery Dead ...

;)

During out hike, I re-connected with Rocky (who's at USC now) about his water tower incident a few years back and found that he had almost fallen off one of the cliffs and died -- I knew of an 'incident' but hadn't realized that it was a near death one, which brings us to two with him (the other was the very bad concussion at Lake of the Ozarks when he tried to 'olly' while wake-boarding - we got back from the hospital MRI at 2am on that one!)

It was a great trip ~ and now it's cold ... brrrr!