Ty - getting the eye from aunt Cairen - so cute! He knows how to give it back......

Although our "girls trip" to Las Vegas wasn't exactly what we had in mind we still had

a good time and made memories that I will forever cherish.

It is February 2009 and the 24th of this month Helmut will be 59 1/2. This means he could

retire, but as you can see he is still working away! I apppreciate all the years of work that he has

put in to take care of me and our family. Wow.......what a guy!

My friend Marie is a very talented knitter(is that a word?). Anyway she made me a

darling little reversible Cinderella doll. This is a picutre of the doll in her rags. You can

turn the skirt and she is in her ball gown. So cute and the details are so amazing!

I love dolls!

We finally got our new kitchen counter top installed. We noticed that the origonal one was warping quite a while ago.....but it took us a very long time to pick outsomething to

replace it and find an installer......don't ask me why?! It's in now and we love it.

I am especially happy about the new desk that we added. Now my computer is in

the kitchen instead of our bedroom.........so great!

Christmas Eve Memories

We had a wonderful

Christmas with all of our children and grandchildren here this year. We

realize that we will not always be this lucky. And this causes us to cherish this busy,

and sometimes hectic season of our lives.

We hope that our friends and family all over the world had as great a Holiday as we did.

On Christmas Eve this year we had an English Dinner.....so yummy and fun.

After dinner we learned to sign "Silent Night" and then tried to sing it in German.

Our four toddlers were so cute in their pajamas!

This is Reagan, Sienna, Krew and Ty.

More Christmas fun!

This is some of the family playing Rook on Christmas Day at Kim and Erik's home after a wonderful Christmas Day turkey dinner.

This is our six older grandchildren on a outing to "Build a Bear".


When we went to spend a few days in Salt Lake City we stayed in the Marriott
with an ice skating rink just out the back door.

This is Matt and Ty getting ready to hit the ice, with a little assistance from Nana.

This is Helmut serving up pizza at the Pie Pizzeria.

We are worn out from all the fun! But truly I am already looking

forward to the next time we can all get together again.

Tis The Season

Our celebration has begun...........as always the first sign of Christmas is decorating the tree.

This year we decided to do something different and we put on just blue and white lights.

This did mean I had to leave off many of my favorite red santa ornaments.......didn't

really want a red, white and blue tree. It is quite pretty and dad is happy since his

favorite color is blue!

The dogs seem content to sleep near the tree no matter what color the lights are each year.

Thanksgiving Point

Even though we didn't get to have all of the family with us for Thanksgiving dinner this year we still had a wonderful month of November. Cairen and her girls came for two weeks and we had so much fun while they were here. One day we took the younger ones to the animal farm at Thanksgiving point. Ty was for sure the bravest at feeding the calves.

We had our first "Clara's Club" meeting at mother's clubhouse. This was, I hope the

begining of a girls organization for the Christiansen family. I really did appreciate

our girls coming.

McKyna spent the night while Cairen was here and pulled off a curley hair day!

Don't you wish you could get your hair to look like that?

Our Thanksgiving morning started off with the neighborhood "Gobble Walk". The plan is to

walk off some of those extra calories ahead of time.......not sure it worked?!

We got a new entertainment center to fit Helmut's big screen TV and as you can see he had

some expert help getting things set up. Actually Paul and Brian were very helpful and Seth even

contributed some muscle between his studying.

Thanksgiving Point - more pictures from our outing

This a picture of Meika taking a pony ride at the animal farm.
Krew is ready to get off!
This month was my parents 60th wedding anniversary. We had a wonderful 3 day

celebration........this is a picture of the family dinner on Saturday night. The talent show that

followed dinner was amazingly entertaining.

Happy 60th to mother and dad........what a cute couple!

oops.......guess I posted this picture twice...........too bad I'm not

skilled enough to take this one off!