Starting off 2009

Well it's been so long since I wrote anything here I figured I'd better say SOMETHING before people think we fell off the face of the earth. So I found a picture Deanna took at Gracie's birthday party the weekend after Christmas. These are Hello Kitty stickers the two of us are decked out in. They combine two of Gracie's favorite things... Cats and PINK!!! Gracie was very generous and Uncle Dennis and Aunt Mary just could NOT have enough stickers on their outfits to make them fashionable.

Then I found this one Deanna took, too, of the bunch who was able to come to the Independence B&B for Thanksgiving. I must say it was really nice not to be the ones who'd traveled the farthest (furthest???) to get there.

This one shows the middle 4 Hubele nieces and nephews... Brenden, Noah, Mikayla, and Micah. They are SO creative! They wrote, directed, and produced a full length stage production of "The Turkey who Escaped" or something like that. Nikki posted the same sort of photo on their blog but I thought it was so cute I had to copy it. Not to give it away, but the turkey escapes the pilgrims in their boat.

This is Gracie and her best friend for the day, Uncle Dennis. The mischievious grins are no doubt the result of some thrilling and dangerous acrobatic feat that had Gracie flying to the rafters or something. All's well that ends well.

We had a lot of fun over Christmas, too. I'll have to find some pictures from that week and comment on them in our next post. We spent the week in Philadelphia and Downingtown with Dennis' family, which was a lot of fun. More to come on that. We got to meet our new little niece, Shaye. Of course I got a cold for Christmas. That wasn't fun to fly back to Portland with, but we survived.

None of our pipes froze that week, and it turns out it was a fantastic week to not be in Portland. There was a ton of snow and had I not left when I did, I likely would have spent Christmas by myself in our new house trying to unpack all the boxes, since their airport was closed for a few days before Christmas. We've made serious progress unpacking over the last several weeks, but there is so much to do! But we love our house and our neighborhood and are starting the year off knowing that we are truly blessed to have all kinds of wonderful family and friends, a warm (now that we got a space heater in our bedroom) bed to rest our heads each night, and a significant other that is kind, funny, smart, and tall. We have so much in common! :-)