This is what it has come to...

Collages. Collages I tell you.  Because of my lack of being a timely blog poster, I have to recap the past month and a half in the form of collages.  Here we go...

It all started with our Thanksgiving Dinner at 1:00 p.m. with The Finch Family.  I have to specify the time because when you go to two Thanksgiving celebrations in one day it's noteworthy:

At 6:00 p.m., The Annual LeMone Family Talent Show got underway.  And again (for the second time) our family took home the traveling trophy after giving an academy award winning skit performance.

The next day we took our stuffed turkey selves and started setting up Christmas: 

 

Our tree each year is decorated with ornaments that have come from friends, neighbors and the kids' homemade crafts.  Their amazing work also finds itself into frames and onto the fridge for the month. 

After the house was decorated both inside and out we baked some yummy treats.  One of which was a gingerbread house(s) that took another trip to the store, two tries and superglue to get it to stay standing. I can't forget to mention the gingerbread man Ryder made, or shall I say woman judging by the strategically placed gummy candies.

We celebrated Pre-Christmas Eve with the annual Finch Family overnighter at Thanksgiving Point. Before we left, Santa stopped by grandpa and grandma's house to read a story with the kids and give them a special Christmas message.  Then it was out the door for some family fun...the agenda included the movie "Tin Tin", dinner at JCW's, swimming and saying hello to the reindeer.  The next morning was Christmas Eve and we finished our celebration with a mean game of bowling that has been a tradition for several years.  Again, I don't want to brag but our family took home the traveling trophy.  It was a holiday trophy sweep from both sides of the family.

Christmas Eve night was spent exchanging homemade gifts with the LeMone family.

Christmas morning.

Best gift: The homemade gifts Ryan made for the family.

Worst gift: Can there ever be a bad Christmas gift? Yes and it's called the Dinosaur Hunter game that we got for Ryder.  With his love for dinos and all, I thought this Wii game that came with a gun to shoot the creatures would surely be a hit. Instead, he tried it one time only to come up stairs crying because he was scared.  I guess I had missed on the box that it was rated Teen.  Oops...

After we opened presents at our home, it was off to Christmas morning at grandpa and grandma Finch's:

Two months of planning, present hunting and preparation comes down to 5 minutes and this...a wonderful mess of memories.

We said goodbye to 2011 with the burning of our family Christmas Tree. It was quite the event.  About 45 minutes after we left our house to go up the street to our friend's to party the night away, we received news that our local fire department (as in two ambulances, two police cars, 1 huge firetruck, the chief's blazer, no pun intended, and 5 fully uniformed fireman showed up to put out the fire that was causing the "billowing black smoke.") Someone had called 911 thinking that our house was burning down. Luckily, nothing had burned down. And as told by the pictures below the night went on just fine as we welcomed in 2012. 

Here's to 2012...

Keeping up on the family blog and trying not to burn down the neighborhood.