Christmas 2008

Christmas Eve for the Hopkins clan was spent at our house. We crammed 34 adults and children into the house and it wasn't bad at all. Everyone had plenty of food, fun and family.

 Stacy and her trusty assistant Trevor did a great job of distributing the gifts to all the children. Notice the "beautiful" tree in the background. I have been so busy this year that I had not even put out one single decoration until the day of the dinner. Wayne and I went to Lowes on Tuesday to look at their artificial trees. We decided that if we were not going to put the tree up until the 24th that we did not want to pay for a real tree only to turn around and throw it away less than a week later. We found a decent looking tree and only paid $29 after 75% off and a $10 coupon. It already has the lights on the tree and when it is filled with decorations and the lights are on it doesn't look too bad.

 The children all lined up ready to rip into all those packages.







 



Grandpa Al and Grandma Lulu oversee it all!


There was and abundance of packages in all sizes, shapes and colors.

A Quilting We Will Go

I have a lady in Madera that I have gone to when I needed to finish up my quilts. I did Thomas and Lucas's quilts several weeks ago and then I returned with Jeannie when she quilted Anna and Karyn's Christmas presents.

 

This first picture shows how big the Longarm machine is.

 

 

Jeannie did a really good job. She is much more daring than I am and I am jealous of the beautiful results.











These are the quilts I made for my boys. Thomas picked out the material when we visited Amish country in September. The colors in the pictures turned out a bit odd but the actual quilts look pretty good.



Now that Christmas is over and I can breathe a little I will start on Preston and Ashlyn's quilts.

A New Roof

After our trip to China, Wayne started on his first major project after retiring. He hired Jordan Papin to help him rip off our old shake shingles and then during the week of Thanksgiving he and Marco, our nephew, reroofed with new composition shingles.

 

Josh and Wayne working hard

 

 

As you can see there was a slight mishap during the roofing. Wayne put a foot through the bathroom ceiling. We went for several weeks with it just patched up but he finally got it all repaired and it looks as good as new!

Take the Quiz and Share Your Results!

I am not a real Twilight fan. I have read the first book for our Book Club and I went to see the movie - with the Book Club. But I did not go beyond book 1. I saw this quiz on my nieces blog and thought I would go ahead and do it though. I liked Esme so I guess I'm okay with the results.