Faithful Friends Who Are Dear to Us

As much as we are "used to" and "happy" living away from family, the holidays are always a time that you long to be together.  Fortunately, we have wonderful friends who help us through these times.  After Christmas, we kept busy enjoying the company of our dear friends.

First up, Dave's cousin Rob and his family had us over for dinner.  It is such a pleasure to spend time with Rob and Mary.  They are very gracious hosts, have wonderful children that our girls adore and we always feel so comfortable with them.  Mary is also an awesome blogger who lets me steal pictures!

A few days later, we had some friends over for the Champs Sports Bowl featuring Notre Dame and Florida State.  We ate pulled pork sandwiches and IBC rootbeer.  The game itself, if you are a Notre Dame fan, isn't really worth mentioning.  Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures.  This is for two main reasons: 1)No need to memorialize a Notre Dame meltdown and 2)I had a baby in my arms most the night as our friends have a two month old that I got to cuddle for a while :)

On New Year's Eve, Dave and I went with some other couples during the day to the temple.  On the way home we stopped for lunch at California Pizza Kitchen.  A very nice way to end one year and begin the next.
 
Later that night, we had another family come over and ring in the new year with us.  We had a Chick-fil-A nugget tray (yeah!) and lots of goodies.  In fact, I think that we were pretty much able to finish up all the Christmas candies and goodies (even all the Christmas candy I made - we thought we would have fudge forerver!)  We also had some fun games of Smash Brothers and Just Dance 3 on the Wii and even played a couple card games--Spot It and Rook.  At midnight we rang in the New Year and then headed straight to bed. 


Waiting for the ball to drop.  The only time I remembered to get a picture.

The girls slept in sleeping bags under the Christmas tree.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!