We started our celebration with the neighborhood "gang" - we had a donut party at the Rhea's and followed it up with the kids' Christmas exchange. Tara Rhea watches the kids during the day and she had them perform some Christmas Carols they had been working on. It was cute. The parents also got some "works of art" from our kids that will, of course, be cherished for many Christmases to come.
Kids singing with Tara - I think Noah was pouting and not singing, so just Izzy, Leo, Tara, and Nicholas are shown here.
Here are the kids using water bottles to punch out the middle of their donuts - Brian then fried them in oil on the stove... they were extra yummy!!Our next celebration was our annual Christmas Eve with the Goods. Izzy, Gran and Mommy embarked on our first gingerbread house decorating mission... we learned many things and are now prepared for next year! Here is our creation... it is a "church" made of gingerbread.
The biggest hits of the night were Maddy's shape sorter and Izzy's marble maze... I think this may actually be a bigger hit with Izzy's daddy, but she loves it, too. We've spent many hours playing with it already!
Maddy and Gran figuring out where things go...
Grampy and Izzy watching the marble travel through their first creation!Christmas morning, the girls found their gifts from Santa in personalized bags by the fireplace! We're so happy that Santa was thinking of the mess of toys in our living room and how we could best organize them in the coming year! :-)
Then, we spent a fun Christmas day with the Fry family at Grandma's house in Greenville. It was so nice to have everyone together and be able to spend a nice relaxing day together.
Izzy and Leah are really at good ages to play together and they spent hours dressing up with Izzy's fairy and princess dress up clothes. Colleen even helped Maddy get in on the action - this is her new face that has emerged in the last couple weeks... she thinks the crown is hilarious! 
Izzy and Leah also spent quite a while cutting and taping and coloring at Grandma's bar. (This is what they did while Tammie and I watched the new Tinkerbell movie... ha! They were too tired to sit through it at that point, I think!) Apparently post-its and scotch tape are quite fun, though!
Following our visit in Darke County, we headed north to Van Wert for a day at my Grandparents' house and a quick visit with Josh and Laura Gross, who were in town from Florida. Unfortunately, I don't have pictures from either of those visits... hopefully we'll remember to take more next year!
We rang in the new year back at home with our neighbors, the Holland family. After getting the kids to bed, we tested out our new Wii Sports Resort, which was a lot of fun. It's probably best that we didn't have any pictures from that event!
Family and friends joined us New Year's day for a "lucky" meal of pork, potatoes and sauerkraut, accompanied by a big Buckeye Win!
The Frys had a great holiday and are so looking forward to what the new year will bring our way!
