Out With the Old, In With the New...

... that saying adopted a whole new meaning this year. We celebrated New Year's Eve at a local diner, and were up WAY past midnight helping Alyssa get over food poisoning. YUCK.

Now that we have thoroughly "purged" ourselves and are ready to start anew I thought I would move up in the computer world. Yes, I broke down and made myself start my own blog spot and yes, I 'll try to update it regularly.

Our Christmas was very quiet, but nice (for the most part). We celebrated on our own this year. It's the second time in the ten years of our marriage that we haven't had family around to join us in our fun. During our solitude, the girls opened piles of presents, we listened to hours of Christmas music, ate 600 lbs. of sugar (per person), watched all the classic Christmas movies, and read through a huge stack of Christmas books.

Our Christmas highlight this year was doing the 12 days of Christmas for one of our neighbors. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the tradition, it means the girls took turns leaving a small gift and doorbell ditching with Dad for the twelve days before the 24th. I got a kick out of watching the girls peek through our front window to watch the delivery, and giggling like crazy once the doorbell had been rung.

Poor little Levi got his first big "owey" on Christmas Eve. I had him in the baby backpack as I prepared dinner and he touched the oven. I felt so bad.

Our little guy has definitely grown.

One of our Christmas Eve traditions is to have the girls hear Santa's bells while Dad and Mom are in the room with them. Since we no longer have a dog, we had to become a little creative as to how to make our bells jingle. I deemed our creation a success. The girls didn't fall asleep until 1:00am, because as Katey says, "I'm just too excited!"

Since Christmas, we've had one more adventure. On December 28th our family watched the reenactment of Washington's march on Trenton. What an enjoyable experience. We were able to march with the continental army, take part in a puppet show, and listen to parts of a lecture about the foods of that time period. Learning about the Revolution and it's people has helped us feel very proud to be Americans. I do have to say, we come from pretty great stalk.

The puppet show.

Our little trooper.

The party pooper (just kidding, it rhymed so, I had to put it.)

The cannons and guns were pretty loud, as the next couple of pictures illustrate. (-:

The boys didn't mind the noise.

We hope each of you have had wonderful holidays too.

Love,

The Tippets Family

PS

I'll figure out how to get the photos in the right direction next time. (-;