I love this picture! 
Isaac carried the tree all the way back home in the blizzard, it didn't help that the wind was blowing the opposite direction down the hill when we were going up it, and that the huge tree acted like a sail to his disadvantage! :P
All of us gathered around the tree in the pine tree forest behind our house owned by our neighbor. He has wonderful trees for wonderful prices at a wonderful distance! :) (My snow pants do NOT normally look like that!! That was totally the light of the camera...trust me. :)
Dad and Lucas took turns pulling Nikolai in the sled. The snow was so deep that it would have taken a year to get him there and back, so we found the perfect solution...a sled! 
The not quite finished product! (Photo complements of Nikolai ;)
Hannah at the computer desk
Playing outside in the fresh snow.
Ethan
Lydia
Tessa showing of our, ahem, beautiful sled. =P
You're probably wondering why I bring up Christmas in October...well it just so happens that my Sr. High Writing class wanted us to write a Christmas letter this week. So with Dec. 25th on my mind, trying to chose some photos to blog about and I came across these! :) Some of these Christmas photos were from 2004 all the way up to 2008, (below.) Even though we still have two months, I decided to put these up just because it's so much fun to look at old pictures...enjoy!!!
My Mom's side all gathered around the table at my Aunts house.
Time to open presents! This was always the highlight of the day when we gave and recived gifts. (Boy, are we a photogenic family or what!)
Almost every year we go to a Christmas party that a company we bought from puts on. It was always a blast because of the huge banquet, fun presents and games, and most of all the unlimited free characatures we brought home!
Getting ready to cut and bring home our christmas tree from our neighbor who sells beautiful pine trees from the woods behind our house. We often would play hide and go seek in his pine tree forest because the huge trees were perfect hiding places right in our back yard! We miss our exchange student "sister" Luba, who now lives in Moscow, Russia.
It was always so exiting to wake up and find our huge stockings stuffed full of odds and ends, even if we knew who really filled them! :)
Tessa and I were always some of the first ones up on Christmas morning because we had to look, shake and guess at our Christmas presents and wake everyone else up so we could open them up. The reason we probably look so sleepy is because I came up with the interesting scheme of setting the alarm off in the middle of the night, so we could pretend what it was like to be Santa Clause (we didn't believe in him,) and put out all of our presents under the Christmas tree and surprise everyone in the morning....the result? Sleep deprivation! :P
An anuall tradition that we did at Christmas was that anyone that played instruments would play Chrismas songs at the gathering.
Here we are at the stocking stuffer party that our Grandma gives us every year. We meet with our cousins and open the stocking with our name on it...sorta like a second Christmas! The girl standing in the back, however, was not our cousin but our exange student, Luba, from Tadjikistan who now lives in Moscow, Russia. She was with us for the school year in 2005 or 2006 and went to St. Croix Central High School in our district. She spoke very little English and we didn't know Russian very well, but she became just like an older sister to us.
Taking orders for the deserts and drinks was our special job that our cousins and us still do. :)
This picture totally cracks me up because I remember exactly what happened. We were in Florida for Christmas break, at Disney World. It was so weird it to see Christmas trees and decorations with no snow in the middle of hot weather! We were walking through a section of Disney World that was all litt up for Christmas, it was late at night and almost closing time. Two 'elves' that were goofing off and acting crazy invited us to come talk to Santa. So we walked over to the North Pole and stopped inside. None of us kids really wanted to talk to him, but I did because I wanted candy. :) After Lucas, Tessa and I sat on his lap and got our presents, we started to leave, but the crazy elves who were pretty much done with their jobs anyway, decided that 16 year old Isaac needed to sit on Santa's lap and talk to him too! So they pushed and prodded the extreemly reluctent and embarresed Isaac to Santa's side and procceded to take a picture of him and ask him what he wanted for Christmas and if he had been a good boy in front of giggiling children. It was hillarious! Of course looking at Isaac's bright red face, he didn't think so!
Emily and Tessa
My friend Amanda and I
They are right on a beautiful lake, so in the Fall when we go with our church we can go kayaking, cameoing, and if the weather permits, (which it didn't this year,) swimming. With T.E.A.C.H we go in the Winter so we get a whole different experience with the lake; we play broom ball, hockey and sled onto it, so fun!
Story Book is completely surrounded by woods and in the fall it is truly a beautiful sight. It reminded me of the verse,
This is the room/cabin we were staying in called the Oasis.
The windmill that actually fits a bed in it!
Ize with some of his friends, after coming back from a caneoing trip.
Don't we look scary! (The face paint is to tell the teams apart. There was a red team and a blue team, I was on the blue team and the blue team won!!!)
Kya
Aspen
Kirsten
Tiara
