Christmas eve

We met Ben and Cam at church on Christmas eve for the candlelight service at a new church they are attending.  It's much closer to their house, instead of the 20-25 minute drive to the one we go to.

The service was very nice and I love the candlelight service.  Our church does not have one.

After church we came home and Ben cooked steaks for all of us as is our usual Christmas eve dinner.

I will post Christmas brunch pictures another time.

My beloved Uncle T.C. passed away this morning after a very sudden illness.  He was a vibrant 89 years old.  He was my dad's youngest sibling and only my 98 year old Aunt Ethel is left.  We will be traveling to Arkansas when we know the arrangements.  Not a good way to end a year or start a year.  He was such a wonderful man and gave the greatest hugs!  He was well loved and will be dearly missed.

He was teased that he was named T.C. (tenth child) because my grandmother ran out of names by the 10th one!  We lovingly called him Top Cat from time to time.

This was taken in July at my Aunt Ethel's 98th birthday celebration.  He looks wonderful for 89!

Please keep his family and our family in your prayers!

Christmas stuff

I've been busy in the kitchen getting ready for Christmas.  I've made at least 10 batches of pecan brittle and I think that is done!

The last of the decorations, the Christmas village, was put up last week by Cameron.  He still enjoys doing that...or he was bored while he was staying with me.  Could be either one!

He did a great job!

He put the nativity set up last weekend.

Always one of my favorite decorations.

I don't think that I posted pictures of the ceramic Christmas trees I made for Heather and Ben.  I made one for my mother over 40 years ago and she always used it for her Christmas tree.  We can't figure out what happened to it when she passed away.  Karen found a place in Russellville where we could paint them so we spent one evening happily painting.  It brought back memories from my ceramics class many years ago.  I sure enjoyed that!

I hope they are keepsakes for them!

I also still buy them Hallmark ornaments for them.  I started this years ago and the darn keepsake series just keeps going!  Heather's is in the 38th year and Ben has two series, one in the 28th year and one in the 24th.

Will they ever end?

I'm missing these two this week.

But sure glad Ben is home safely and done with training!

School pictures

The kids got their school pictures and I can't get over how much they have grown and changed!  I don't see it day to day but they change a lot year to year.

Harrison has grown so much and his voice changed overnight.

Emma Taylor looks so old and so glam!

Cameron looks more "growny" (as Mother would say) every year.  Does anyone else's mother say that?

I haven't gotten Bowen's school picture and Sam is a senior and will have senior pictures take so I'll post those later.

About to head off to have lunch with friends!  Enjoy your day!

Making cookies

Emma Taylor and I made cookies on Saturday.  She brought over an ugly sweater cookie kit which makes 16 cookies.  It has the frosting tubes and decorations included.  It's so much easier than making them ourselves!  I got a kit at Walmart to make with Cameron the following day.  Harrison has no interest in it.  Sad!

Anyway, Emma Taylor and I had a great time and her ugly cookies were far from ugly!  They were works of art!

 

She did all of these by herself!

Then we made peanut blossoms.  She made these all by herself too.

Packing them up to take home.

We also made pretzel treats but I didn't get a picture of them.

Ben is out of town again so he brought Cameron over Sunday morning before he went to the airport.  Cameron went to early church with us, we came home and made breakfast, then made our ugly sweater cookies.

He did this one all by himself.  So cute!

The kit makes it so easy!

Cameron had an ugly Christmas sweater dance Friday night.  He and Ben picked out this one.  Ben said it wasn't easy to find an ugly Christmas sweater for boys!

Emma Taylor needed an ugly Christmas sweater for a project at school.

I actually think the sweaters are cute!  Remember when we used to wear Christmas sweaters?  They were very popular!

Lots of Christmas fun!

Branson Trip, Day 6

We left Branson and headed to Bentonville, the home of Walmart.  Our first stop was the Walmart Museum.  This is where it all started!

This was Sam Walton's office.  It was completely dismantled, including the paneling on the walls, and reconstructed in the museum.

Sam's old truck that he drove daily.

The museum is full of interesting stuff.  I would highly recommend a stop if you're in the area and it's free!

We had lunch on the square around the corner from the museum that was recommended to us by someone in the museum.

Very good.

Next stop was Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.  It was started by one of Sam Walton's daughters.  It's also free.

The building architecture is quite unique!

Such beautiful art!

I especially loved these hummingbird paintings.

There were some unusual "artwork" there as well!  We weren't even sure what this was!

The Chihuly glass is beautiful!

There was also a Frank Lloyd Wright home on the property.  It was originally built somewhere else and reconstructed on the museum property.

Tours are free but you have to sign up for a tour at a particular time.  Unfortunately we didn't have the time to wait for a tour since we were heading home.

It's a very interesting place and I'm so glad we had a chance to visit it.

This was such a dreary and rainy weekend!  I did decorate ugly Christmas sweaters with Emma Taylor on Saturday and with Cameron on Sunday.  I'll post pictures of that later.  Cameron is with us this week as Ben is in Houston for his last week of training, at least the last week he'll have to go to Houston!

Branson Trip, Day 5

Another emotional morning watching President Bushes' funeral.  It was a beautiful service.  I enjoyed each tribute.   I especially enjoyed hearing about what a sweet relationship he and Barbara had.  They just don't make them like him anymore.

Back to Branson.

We grabbed some donuts at Krispy Kreme.  They were giving a free donut to each person that walked in the door.  Then, of course, we had to buy some more so we were kind of on sugar overload.  I love the KK though!  I can't resist when that Hot light is on!

We headed to Harrison, AR to meet some of Doug's old friends for lunch.  We made a couple of stops in Harrison for photo ops.

This one was at the visitors' center downtown.

There was a very interesting lady working in there.  We enjoyed talking with her.  

We met Lem and Patty Boyd and they gave us a little tour of Harrison, then went to lunch.

Lem used to work for Doug's dad at the gas station when Doug was a kid.  Lem is 85 now, looks great and gets around great!  We had a really nice visit.

We headed back to Branson to get on the Branson Scenic Railway for an hour and a half ride "over the river and through the woods."

Each train car was small and decorated for Christmas.

No pictures from the moving train but there really wasn't that much to see.  We did enjoy the ride though.  They were doing the Polar Express in the evenings and I'm sure it was packed!

Only one more day in Branson!