Elizabeth Turns 18

Sharon's oldest, Elizabeth, turned 18 on December 27. It's so hard to believe little Elizabeth is now a legal adult! This is her last Christmas at home before she goes off to college next year. Crazy!

We had a nice birthday dinner for her:

Time for presents!

Sarah made an adorable college survival kit for Elizabeth, and she wrote a poem to introduce/explain each of the items in the kit. Rachel (in pink) helped by holding each item up as Sarah mentioned it in her poem. It was such a sweet gift! 

This is one of those infinity scarves with a zipper pocket in it for your cell phone/keys/wallet/ID/Chapstick, etc. It's just a nice way to have a few things with you, but you don't have to carry a purse. Perfect for college life!

Elizabeth also got a nice Better Homes & Gardens cookbook. She also got Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (the large illustrated version). The illustrated Harry Potter books have really cool pictures in them.

The whole Leigh gang, and then a picture of Elizabeth and Chan:

I sure love Elizabeth, and I'm glad I get to see her a couple times each year!

Lazy Sunday Afternoon

This is a post with some pictures from back on December 23. It was a Sunday afternoon, and we were just enjoying hanging out as a family after we got home from church. I wanted to take a few pictures since I was up and looking presentable. Here I am with my sister, Sharon. We both had sweaters on that were the same shade of red. The next picture is of me and my niece, Elizabeth.

And here I am with Chandra:

Chan and sweet Ruby:

Rachel was crocheting, and her skein of yarn was a bit tangled. Her dad was helping her untangle it, so she could roll it into a ball. Christian was assisting. It was a group effort!

Kate was reading Les Misérables, but she stopped to smile for the camera. I thought the pictures below of Spencer and Ruby were cute. I loved how they were smiling at each other:

Christmas 2018

Well, I've really been procrastinating making a blog post about Christmas. I'm lazy, what can I say?! SO, I will just do a quick post, mainly with pictures and with a few details here and there. I had a great Christmas, and it was wonderful to spend it with my sister Sharon and her family. I'm grateful that they make the trip up from Mississippi to spend Christmas with us. Chandra and her family also spent a lot of time over here. Christian loves seeing his cousins. :)

It's really hard to get good pictures in this room, so some of them are better than others, but at least I can look back in the future and remember what was going on.

Rachel made these adorable little aprons for herself and Emi. She did it all by herself. I love how creative she is! 

Christian asked for two things for Christmas: a scooter and an orange clock to hang in his bedroom. (We have no clue where the second request came from!) He got both, but wasn't interested in smiling for the camera:

Ruby got a doll that says, "I love you."

I made Elizabeth a personalized mug from Shutterfly with pictures from her life. I wish I would've gotten a better picture of her with it, but I didn't. I'm so glad she liked it, though!

Emi gave me her gingerbread girl that she made at school, and I gave her a rock painting kit:

Sarah got a large stack of books for Christmas:

Chandra and Mom working on Christmas dinner, and Christian and Rachel painting:

One of my favorite Christmas gifts came from Sarah (she is 13, and she plays percussion in band). Sarah gave us her Christmas present one night after dinner was cleaned up. She'd previously asked everybody what their favorite Christmas song was, and she composed a medley that she entitled "Mistletoe Medley" consisting of 13 or 14 different Christmas songs. She played it on her bells (small xylophone), which she'd brought with her. It was SO sweet, and she did such a great job. Sharon said that Sarah had been working on her piece and had been practicing since October. Sarah's hard work and thoughtfulness really touched my heart, and I couldn't help but cry while she played. We convinced her to give us an encore performance a couple nights later, even though she didn't want to.