Make A Joyful Noise

This past week we had a (big), fluffy and cute visitor at our house! Yes, we had the privilege to
host Charlie Watkins at our house for the week. He was such a good boy, and despite his
homesickness, he had a very good time! The cute thing was I think somehow I became one of his favorite people at my house. He followed me EVERYWHERE and whenever I sat down to play piano (even for several hours) he would just lay back on the couch in that room and listen to me play. This past week Charlie found a special place in my heart =] I'm so glad we got to have him!

We also had an out-of-the-normal Christmas this past week. Since my parents ordered several of our presents online, only one or two presents made it to our house BEFORE Christmas :P So us kids had about 2 presents to open including our secret Santa gifts. But in the end all turned out well. We had a slightly boring yes, but a relaxing Christmas day just lounging around.
Here are some pictures from our past week! (please, as hard as it may be, try to ignore how bad we look on Christmas morning! =] )

Hey everybody, I hope all of you have a great Christmas, remembering that this was the day that Christ was born in a manger to later die on the cross for our horrible sins. There is no way for me to say how thankful I am that God chose ME to be saved by his son's death, out of the depths of sin! I'm glad we can have one special day to reflect when Christ was first born to later save us.

I hope everybody has a great Christmas and New Year as we move into 2009! (I can't believe it!)

Love you all,
AES

Today Elle and I went over to the Ellise's to make cookies/deviled eggs. (don't ask why such random food) Well anyways I got these new jeans which I love! but they are just a little too long for me. So as we were cleaning up the kitchen there was some water on the floor and I didn't want to get my new jeans wet on the bottom. So I sat down to roll up the cuffs of my jeans. The first one rolled up fine, but as I started to roll up the second leg I saw a disgusting cockroach! sitting comfortably in my jeans and probably upset when I discovered it. It probably got more upset when I started screaming and shaking my leg violently to try to get it out. I could feel it's antenae and little legs crawling up my leg which of course, made me scream louder and kick my leg harder. I was almost about to take my jeans off in the kitchen but I didn't of course =] instead I just went outside and shook the jeans so hard I probably undid a couple of seams. I can now feel its little legs still on my shin and I'll probably never wear jeans that are too long for me again....

For our Resurgence Christmas party, we had a costume party and everybody had to dress up. We had contests for the best decorated cookie, the best outfit, and the best singing group for karaoke.
Here are some pictures from it (sorry a lot of them are blurry and got cut off, so if you wanna see the full picture click "view all images" on the slideshow) I dressed up as a girl from the 50's and well you can just guess who everybody else was by their pictures :) The person who won best dressed was dressed as Willy Wonka! Enjoy.

Well we aren't doing much this year, but this post's for Connor.

On Christmas eve our family usually piles into our car, and go look for some of the best-lit houses.

Then Christmas morning we usually don't wake up too early, and we go downstairs to a delicious breakfast my mom makes! We have different food every year, so I'm not sure what we'll have this year. So anyways, we eat breakfast, and sit down at the table to read the Christmas story out of the Bible. after that we start opening presents. Usually we take turns, but some years my parents just let us open them all at once. We also do secret Santa for just us kids, so we only have to buy for our dad, mom, and our secret Santa! It works out quite nicely =] I have already bought one of my presents, so I'm feeling pretty good so far.

After all of the morning stuff, we usually just hang out, and enjoy each other, and our new gifts =]

So there ya go Connor! (If i forgot something I'll add it in another post)

This is a picture of a rose that came from our rose bush out front. (Elle took this)

I tag Makenzie P, Abigail L, Anna W, my mom, and Aliya. (sorry in advance if you have already been tagged by someone else :P )

All you do is: go to your 5th picture folder, post the 5th picture in that folder, then tag 5 people!