I've been away for a while for two reasons - one, one of my children wasn't able to come for Thanksgiving, and I didn't want to rub salt in the wound by raving about it, and two, I have had a dickens of a time getting those photos off my camera for some reason.

We weren't able to go to Utah for the family Christmas party last week, so in some cosmic sense, I guess things have come into balance once again, so I'll report on Thanksgiving...

We had such a great time with the family - it's been several months now since we've seen anyone, so it was good to have them all here.  We celebrated all the Nov. - December birthdays;

The oldest Grand daughter is learning to play violin this year - she brought it with (homework) and she serenaded us for a while...

She's really pretty good :-)

Thanksgiving day was fun - I had lots of help in the kitchen, and when it was over, everyone excused me to go take a nap, and they cleaned up!  Yay!

When it was all over with, Grandpa brought out the Christmas tree - he's been waiting for weeks for his little girls to come and decorate it.

Grandpa, relaxing with his girls...

My son's family left on Saturday, but my daughters stayed until Sunday.  Melissa had lots of fun decorating the rest of the house with holiday decor.  My house is all festive now, and ready for the holidays.

The tree in my living room

Wayland claimed this corner for his Santas...

The little tree in our bedroom;

December is Rodeo time here in Las Vegas.  The big National Finals Rodeo goes on for a couple of weeks, with all kinds of festivities.  Wayland has been very busy at his store, since he caters to that crowd.  The girls, getting their cowgirl on in daddy's hats...

There is a big Western Show at the convention center during the rodeo, and Wayland's store had a booth there...

Other than that, I have been painting like crazy getting some things done that my sister "ordered" shipped them out today...

I can't believe this, but in my rush to get them done and out of here, I forgot to take pictures!

Curses.

I did get these, however - the canvases came in three packs, so I did all of them...

Besides all that, I've been working really hard on billiongraves.com (a genealogy website where you input information from headstones - very cool, and more fun than playing solitaire for hours...)

That's our December.

I can't believer that Christmas is almost here already, we are hoping to be able to run up and spend Christmas Day with the family, the last trip didn't pan out, so knock wood...  Hubby only has the 2 days off, so it will be a quick (and short) trip, but worth it.

Happy Holidays!