A Sad Goodbye...

I am sorry to say that Ryan's Grandma Marge "graduated" into Heaven last week. She was an incredibly godly woman who was an inspiration to everyone who knew her. She fought a very courageous battle with cancer. Even though she was really Ryan's grandma I was blessed enough to know her since I was 16, so she has had a large impact on me. I think she will be most remembered by the love she had for everyone. She was rarely seen not holding a baby or talking to one of her many grandchildren. She had more patience than us mom's had! I spent many hours with Grandma just talking and getting her opinions on all sorts of things. I know I am not the only one who can say that! Her sweet smile will be missed but I can't help but smile when I think of her in heaven with Jesus. We love you Grandma.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!



We had a wonderful Christmas season this year. As much as we do miss the snow, the weather is very nice here in Doha in December. Maybe we will take the kids to visit snow next Christmas, Jonathan is the only one who remembers what snow is like. The kids love to hear stories of me and my siblings sledding off the roof of the house when we would have "snow days."
Anyways.. We pulled the tree out of the closet (sad, huh?) early this year, day before Thanksgiving. The kids loved looking at all of their ornaments, and we were able to reminice a little bit ;)



When we got home from holiday, we had some friends over to make gingerbread cookies. It was my first time making them and we think they ended up being very yummy! Gabriel and Lukas were very dedicated and cut out most every cookie! Jonathan, Annelise and Hava joined in for the decorating! We are able to get yummy American Christmas candy here, but we pay dearly for it. About 8.00 USD per bag!









Gabriel and Lukas cutting out the cookies...






Decorating the cookies Yummy!!


A couple days before Christmas, the lights on our tree stopped working. Since you can't have Christmas morning without lights on the tree, we took all the ribbon and lights off and put new light on. I didn't put the ribbon back on, but the tree was nice anyways.

The kids woke up early on Christmas, but we made them eat breakfast before they opened their gifts. (My brothers and sisters and I would have NEVER let this happen at our house!) The kids had a great time watching dad (AKA Santa)pass out the gifts. My parents woud have been so proud, the kids passed the trash bag around and took their own turns! (with the exception of Aliyah!) We had some friends over for a big Turkey dinner that night.

Merry Christmas!

Over the rest of the break we took the kids to the zoo, and had a game night at our house. The kids have enjoyed the nice weather and have been playing outside with their friends. They go back to school on Tuesday. I will be sending out our Christmas newsletters as soon as the stamps arrive here, hopefully this week. We love you all!

Desert Island

Our resort we are staying at has a deserted island about 5 minutes by boat away. We went for a treasure hunt and a "pirate picnic" yesterday. We also saw black tipped reef sharks and eels! The kids played lots of fun games and swam and snorkled in the sea. Everyone else took a speedboat, but we opted for a pedalos. Quite a site, 8 people on a pedalo!

Ryan and I sent the kids to kids club and went back out to the island at sunset. We had an amazing 5 course dinner on the beach with candles in the sand! We had some crabs come and visit too! We stayed out there for 3 hours and it was amazing! We had some banana boat riding this morning, and we are off to make pizza! Our big news of the day was.... RAIN! we woke up this morning not only to huge waves at our back door, but the sound of rain! We had our showers in our outdoor showers, with the rain and all! We walked to breakfast jumping in sandy puddles, What Fun! We haven't seen rain in about 10 months so it was a real treat!