It's been good to hear from some of you friends and family of ours about how your season is going.  This week we worked through Wednesday, although we found some time to do some Christmas shopping during that time, and then took today (Christmas Eve) off.  It's been a nice day and, of course, we're looking forward to our day tomorrow.  It looks like we'll have a white Christmas ... sort of.  It snowed here quite a bit starting almost two weeks ago, through last weekend.  Since then it has warmed up and some of the snow has melted, but for the most part it has turned to ice as snowmelt has refrozen, and some freezing rain has fallen also.  So while there is technically snow on the ground out there, it's not the fun powdery stuff you'd like it to be.  It's more like aged, hardened snow encased under a coating of ice.  

The driveway behind our building where we park.  Currently more or less solid ice.  That's our van on the right.

And in the front of our building, this is the walkway up to our entrance door in the courtyard.  Again, solid ice, although some kind soul has gone to the trouble of spreading a little sand on it.

As I said, we've had a nice Christmas Eve.  We went shopping out at one of our city's malls earlier in the day, and had lunch while the boys watched people ice skate (and repeatedly fall).  Then we returned home and rested and played all afternoon.  In the evening Denyce made some awesome homemade pizza, we wrapped presents, and played some more.  We listened to some Christmas music and took some photos (see below), and Denyce read Twas The Night Before Christmas to the boys.  They're now asleep in their beds, although the two adult creatures in the house are still stirring -- me typing this post, and Denyce getting ready to make some cookies.  When I think hard enough about what our Christmas Eves and Christmas Days were like in past years, I realize that this seems kind of lonely, since we have spent the whole day on our own, without family.  But on the other hand I think we're used to that somewhat and have learned to make the most of it and appreciate our time with each other as a family.  We definitely miss you all though, and have so many memories of Christmases in California and West Texas... it's sure not the same!  Tomorrow (Christmas Day) we are spending Christmas morning together as a family, and then in the afternoon and evening our teammates are all coming over, along with the other ladies' parents who are here visiting. Looking forward to that too.

I'll wrap this post up with some of the photos we took tonight.  These are not polished or anything, just us having fun with the camera before the boys hit the sack.  I didn't even bother to sharpen them, because I don't want to spend Christmas Eve editing photos.  Also, when it came time to get a photo with both me and Denyce in it, we entrusted that task to Malachi, and so credit for the last photo goes to him.  

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