2009 Book List

Books that I read during 2009:

The Shack by William P. Young

Tuesday Night at the Blue Moon by Debbie Fuller Thomas

Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall & Denver Moore

Unashamed: A Burning Passion to Share the Gospel by Floyd McElveen

Unafraid: Mary by Francine Rivers

2009 Taylor Family Christmas Card

I am pretty sure that most received their Christmas cards from us before Christmas Day, but it was close.  Last year I was on the ball, I had professional pictures taken and sent the Christmas cards out in the beginning of December.  Not the case this year.  I ended up snapping a few pictures of the girls in front of the Christmas Tree about 5 minutes before we left to go to the Radio City Christmas Spectacular {which was AWESOME by the way…I highly recommend it}. When we got home that night I plugged the pictures in to a template on Walmart.com and DONE.  Thank goodness for one hour processing!

2009 Taylor Family Christmas Card

“The Trappings of Christmas” Sermon Series

Sermon #1 – “The Trappings of Christmas: The Lights” Rev. Clay Lein

Sermon Audio

Sermon #2 – “The Trappings of Christmas: The Presents” Rev. Clay Lein

Sermon Audio

Sermon #3 – “The Trappings of Christmas: The Child” Rev. Clay Lein

Sermon Audio

Sermon #4 – “The Trappings of Christmas: The Tree” Rev. Joel Prather

Sermon Audio

Sermon #5 – “The Trappings of Christmas: The Choice” Rev. Clay Lein

Christmas Eve Eve 2009

This year we started the 2 day countdown to Christmas by decorating our first ever Gingerbread House.  We made a Gingerbread Tree last Christmas and the girls thought that we should move up to a house.

The girls ready to get started!

Step #1 Complete! {or so we thought}

Time to add the delicious decorations:

                    

Gracie added the last finishing touches!  {Take notice of the gumballs at the peak of the roof because this is the last time you will see them}

Right after we finished adding all the “landscaping” {and using up ALL the icing} the roof opened up and swallowed the gumballs.  Thinking that it had moved as much as it was going to move we decided to cover the gap with larger mints.

This almost worked but the roof wasn’t finished moving and it swallowed the mints too.  We had to get a little rough with the roof and push it back together. I held it for a while and it finally stayed put.  We covered the peak with marshmallows, which thankfully did not get swallowed up by the house.

The girls with their completed Gingerbread House!!!  Great job ladies!

Looks good enough eat!

WAIT!!! Not yet!

We finished up the day with a Christmas Eve Eve dinner with friends.  We had a great time with lots of laughs.  What a wonderful way to start the Christmas festivities.

Santa Visit

Kathy and I met in Allen to take the kiddos to visit Santa.  Last year we took them all together and really enjoyed having them all in the same picture so we decided to do it again this year.  They all look so different {especially Preston who was still in the oven cooking last year}.  Santa looks EXACTLY the same…oddly so.  How does he keep his hair cut so that is looks the same?  Guess that is another one of his many secrets.

2008                     2009

O’ Christmas Tree

Lance and I have been wanting to take the girls to buy a real Christmas Tree for several years now.  We both grew up with that tradition and it’s one that we want our girls to have too.  We decided this was the year!  We loaded up the girls and headed to the tree lots.  Of course I brought my camera and had visions of getting tons of great pictures…like the girls looking at trees, the girls in in front of the one we chose and of course the tree tied to the top of the car. However, I forgot to charge the battery on the camera so these are the only {sigh} two pictures we have of our family Christmas Tree search…there’s always next year.

Well, I don’t have a bunch of pictures of the search, but we did find our perfect tree:

The girls were introduced to the one major draw back of a real tree {besides the needles everywhere} and that is waiting to decorate it. They were patient and finally it was time to decorate.

You might notice in this picture that Lance doesn’t look too excited to be putting lights on the tree.  I don’t blame him because this is his FOURTH TIME to puts lights on this tree.  Let me explain.  The night after we bought the tree Lance stopped on the way home from work to buy the lights for it.  After dinner he started putting the lights on.  He got the first string on, asked me what I thought, we both liked it so he continued with the next two boxes.  He was all done, plugged in the lights and…the last two boxes he put on the tree were BLUE!  After looking at the boxes more closely we now know that in the LED world of lights there are “warm white” lights {normal clear lights} and “cool white” lights {which are blue}.  So the next day I took back the blue lights to replace them with “warm white”.  Luckily I bought the stores last two boxes of the “warm white” {there were cases and cases of the “cool white” in case you were wondering}. That night Lance started putting the new lights on the tree again.  He got 2 boxes put on and it was all looking great.  He opened the final box of lights and inside were RED LIGHTS!  Someone had just shoved the red lights in the “warm white” box. At the point it was comical {to me anyway, I don’t think Lance was quite as amused}.  Knowing the girls were dying to decorate the tree Lance went to several stores trying to find one last box of “warm white” with no luck. So he brought home a completely different type of light.  They all matched and they all worked.  Now why did we get a real tree again…oh yeah, for the memories!

After Daddy got the lights on it was time to add the ornaments! 

  

 

Time to put on the star or in our case the nativity cross

Taylor Family Christmas Tree 2009:

Plano Christmas Parade

Kathy and Tony took the girls to the Plano Christmas Parade for the first time last year.  The parade has been going on for years…Tony used to walk in it as a kid.  Tony’s parent's house it SUPER close to the parade route.  So we parked at their house, walked down their alley where we had front row seats.

Headed to the parade route

           

All set up waiting for the parade to make it’s way to us!

I’m not going to post pictures of the entire parade, but thought I would add some of our favorites.

               

Santa marked the end of the parade so we loaded up our stuff and headed back to the house.

The kids really enjoyed the parade AND of course the candy!! 

I have to add in a amusing {to us at the parade anyway} little side story.  About half way through the parade a lady in the parade stepped into a uncovered manhole of some sort and hurt her ankle {this is not the funny part}.  She was okay, but was very concerned that some one else would fall into it since it was right in the middle of the parade route. Another person in the parade decide to grab one of our chairs that we brought and used it to cover the hole {I was not yet aware of the “hole” fiasco at this point so I don’t have any pictures of our chair out in the middle of the street}.  It worked pretty well since it was very obvious and required people to go around it.  Someone alerted the Plano Police about the hole {this is where is started to become comical}.  Not wanting anyone else to get hurt, the put a traffic cone over the hole.

This worked okay for a while until one of the Mom’s marching in the parade tripped over the cone.  Not knowing that it was covering a hole she threw the cone out of the street.  We were shouting at her that it was covering a hole right when the band behind her starting marching across the hole.  THANKFULLY, no one fell in.  I am not sure how, but they didn’t.  Realizing what she did the same Mom decides to put the cone back on but she puts it on upside down INTO THE HOLE.  As she passed us she shouted that it was a smarter way to mark the hole.  I am not too sure how marking a hole with another hole is smarter, but we let that go.  Lance or Tony {I don’t remember now} ran out an turned the cone back up.

 Then the police came back out to take pictures {during the parade} of the hole.

They must have heard that the one cone wasn’t working so they decided to leave a Junior Office to watch the hole and warn others {so I assume since we couldn’t hear them}.

The officers must have thought that one cone and one junior officer still wasn’t enough so they came back and added two more cones for good measure.

Even with three cones and a junior officer it still took a Mom from the parade to help steer the kids around the hole safely.  Thankfully, so one else fell in the hole!