Merry Christmas!!!!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas holiday!

Ours was fun, but busy.

We had the chance on the Saturday before Christmas to meet up with our newly married friends Kerry and Cameron for a quick lunch. It was very nice to catch up a little though there is never enough time.

We traveled to Cedar Rapids to celebrate with the Foley family on Sunday. Kerry hitched a ride, so I got to spend a little additional time with her.

Everyone was able to make it on Sunday for Christmas (with the exception of Austin who lives in Colorado). Bruce and Willie were even in town from Memphis TN!

Here is the lovely Christmas tree with the kids' haul underneath!

Cathy had the kids participate in an interactive nativity story - it was really a good thing to spend a little time concentrating on the reason for our celebration...and fun too!

Here are Ben and Alex anxiously awaiting the "go ahead"

Ms. Samantha and Julie all decked out for the occassion as always!

We were able to spend the night and take our time on Christmas Eve day at the Foley house which was nice and made Sunday night slower and more relaxed.

On Christmas day we spent the day at Tim and Nicolle's house for our McClure Christmas celebration. We started with breakfast and hung out for lunch and even dinner that night.

Here is Colin's FatHead of Batman we got him....all up and ready to defend! Looks like Colin is ready to do his part too;)

Congratulations to Tim and Nicolle that are newly engaged!

Steve and Colin doing a little stargazing in the evening

December 10-14

Hello!

I am writing at the end of December for the middle of December since these are pictures I set asside at the time of our ice storms to share and as usual got too busy to finish an entry.

We were not affected as much as a lot of people in Iowa. We had no loss of power - just some trees that looked like they shouldn't survive, so we were lucky.

Here is the ravine in our back yard...you can see the poor bent over young trees at the bottom of the picture:( They have since recovered.

Steve decided the week of his Birthday (the 7th of December) that he was too old to shovel all of the time and outfitted his riding lawn mower with a blade and snow chains:)

Zeus and Ollie were not slowed down by the nasty weather in the least - in fact they seem to enjoy it

I just thought this one was kind of pretty