Tonight we hosted our annual Small Group Christmas party at our house. We had people from three of the young adult groups at our church come over...for a total of 26 adults and 8 kids in our house. Craziness!! This was another night that I was so thankful we waterproofed and remodeled our basement, because we definitely needed the space. The picture above is a portion of the group during the White Elephant gift exchange. The best gift of the night--Amy's dead tarantula! Here's a bonus picture of that:
I'm cheating a little because I didn't actually take this picture. But I did set the settings on the camera, and I took a lot of practice pictures before this one to get everything right...so I say this counts. Amy came over today and took our family picture for our Christmas cards this year. She had to do a lot more than just push the button though...trying to get both Audrey and Maggie to look at the camera and get Audrey to smile all at the same time was a difficult task. We didn't get one with Audrey smiling and everyone looking at the camera, but this one turned out pretty good. I'm sure that many of you who read this blog are also on our Christmas card mailing list as well...so you can watch for a card with this picture coming your way soon!
My mom got this Fisher Price nativity for Audrey last year. I think it is so cute! Most of the time Audrey just wants to throw all the pieces off the table and onto the floor. But today she was playing with it more...though her idea of playing with it was to try to fit as many pieces as possible inside the stable!
My friends have the cutest kids! And I just can't help but to take pictures of them! This is my friend Laura's son Caleb, and he is just the sweetest little boy. I have a ton of pictures of him because he kept wanting me to take his picture so that he could look at it on my camera. I had a good time getting together with my old college friends tonight! Tomorrow--it's time to go home!!
Today, the quest continued to get a good picture of Lyndlee and Audrey together. And the quest failed. At least they are both in this picture. But they aren't exactly smiling for the camera (or even looking at it). And it's out of focus and in bad lighting. Audrey did love this air mattress though. She saw Lyndlee and her friend bouncing on it last night, and she wanted to bounce too. Then this morning she just kept throwing herself on the air mattress, falling off, laughing, and then doing it all over again. It was cute! (too bad I didn't take a picture of that!)
While we are in Joplin, we are staying in a guest room on campus at OCC. The room is really nice; it's just a bit on the small side. And with all three of us and all of our stuff in here, there's not a lot of room for Audrey to play. And now that she knows how to walk, she is not very content to just sit still and play with a toy. Even though the room is small, the bathroom is actually pretty big. So we've been playing some in the bathroom. And Audrey has discovered a new toy: the toilet! She likes to bang on the lid with her toys...I think she thinks it's a drum! I don't plan on making the toilet a regular play object for Audrey, but for now it will have to do. Desperate times call for desperate measures!
