Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone!  Hope that your 2012 was great and that your 2013 will be even better!

We ended the year at our Sunriver home celebrating with family and friends.  We started with a family Christmas and it was pretty great!  Here's some fun things we did:

               ~walks through the snow to the local coffee shop~



                                    ~sledding~

                        ~more walks in the snow~

                          ~Breakfast with Santa~

                  ~Christmas Eve family dinner ~

                                                ~ a lot of time with these two~

The holidays have always been my favorite time of the year and this year was no exception.  It was really the best to have all of us together.  Now it's back to life, back to reality.....

                                 I wish you a wonderful new year from my family to yours!

...months and months...

Hey!  Here I am.  Boy has this year been a blur.  Six months since my last post!  An awful lot going on here.  New grand baby, wonderful trip to Italy, youngest daughter's wedding, and BAM!  Now it is a week until Christmas.

I know that I owe you a whole whack of posts and believe me I have a lot to tell you.  But those stories are for another day.  (Probably after the 1st of the year).

I did want to share something though that happened this past weekend.  It really warmed my heart.

Every other year we have a Christmas party in our barn.  It's a really fun, relaxed afternoon with many friends and family members.  It's a casual thing, people dress in jeans and warm coats.  The barn has heat but it's a big barn and it takes a long time to heat it up!

Each year that we have this party we ask everyone to bring a toy to be donated to kids in our community that are in need.  This year we chose to work with Tuality Hospital.

They specifically asked for games and toys for kids ages 9-12.  This age range seems to get less donations than other ages.  So when we sent out our invites we asked for game and toys for them and boy did the gifts roll in!

Legos, Sorry, Monopoly, Scrabble!  I think we got 9 Apples to Apples games!  I am so thankful for our friends and family and am especially thankful that they are so generous.  I packed up all of the toys and games yesterday morning and headed to the hospital with them. (My car was jammed!)  The hospital was really happy to see me!  They were so appreciative and it felt so good to deliver this gift.  

In a matter of days we will be heading to our house at Sunriver for the holidays with the entire family.  I am really excited about this!   Can't wait to celebrate the season with the grandkids! I think there will be some sledding in my near future...

 I leave you with a little gift~

Elliet and her first Christmas tree.

Until next year, happy holidays!

...what 80 looks like...

This past week we celebrated 2 birthdays, our daughter, Kate and my dad, Larry.  Since their birthdays are two days apart we have been celebrating with a family dinner on the day that falls between.  This year we had Italian and it was great.  After dinner Kate and her grandpa posed for their annual birthday picture.  It was a wonderful evening.

We continued the celebration into the weekend with a big birthday party for my dad.  This year makes 80 years for him!  I can't believe that he is 80.  We've been planning this party for the better part of this year and all of the planning paid off with a great party!

Kris, Erin, Paytan, Kate and Chris

Family!

5 generations!  Great Aunt Wanda, Dad, Erin, Paytan and me!

Me and my girls!

The Stone women with the birthday boy!

Dad had family and friends that traveled from all over to be here for this celebration.  It was the best day!  Happy Birthday Dad!  Here's to many, many more celebrations!