One Day Closer

Tonight we took a trip down memory lane and watched It's a Wonderful Life for the 107th (?) time.  It's an annual Christmas tradition but occasionally, when I need a little dose of a simpler life in black and white, I bring it out in other seasons.  We had another appetizer buffet with treats afterward in front of the screen.  Yesterday, our neighbor friends dropped off a huge bucket of goodies with a movie night theme.  We waited to open it until right before show time and enjoyed popcorn and enough candy to rot everyone's teeth.  I stuck to the raspberry martinis Chris made me.  If you want to try a great mixed drink over the holiday, google Bonefish's Raspberry Martini recipe.  It's very good.

This was so pretty I had to take a picture.

 Random picture from this afternoon.  I call it "Smurfettes".

 Another pic.  Even though it's blurry, I love it.  If I could have convinced Ella to keep posing, I would have adjusted my shutter speed and hopefully gotten a clearer photo.  With her, it's usually a one shot deal though.

Another tradition.  This one is only three years old but we have loved it every year we've done it.  One of the couples in our TEAMS group hosts a hay ride to see the Christmas lights.  This year, we enjoyed chili, hot dogs and warm beverages and then ventured out to sing carols and ooh and ahh over all of the elaborate light displays in their neighborhood.  The trailer was full of hay bails to sit on and was covered in lights.  We definitely rode in style.  My favorite part of the night was when we rode up to a house with a sign that said "Welcome Home Mason USMC". Chris immediately started in on the Marine Hymn.  "From the Halls of Montezuma..."  Others joined in and soon, a twenty something year old young man was standing in the doorway with his friends or family members.  It was pretty awesome.  As we drove away, one of our TEAMS guys remarked, "that mother got the best Christmas present ever."  Isn't that the truth.

 The trailer

 Mia Claus

 Shining some light on the lyrics

 Chris leads the choir (you can see Christy laughing)

 At the Train House.

The only stop we make on our trip is to walk around the incredible display of trains at this house.

Every year, this family works their front yard as they welcome huge numbers of visitors.  

Littler kids can ride the two Thomas trains they put out and older kids can try to count how many train sets they have going all over the front yard.

 As for me, I followed Ella around and played with my camera.  Because of all the lights, I did pretty well without the flash.  Incredibly, I am going on two weeks of taking all of my photos in manual mode.

 My favorite

Ella and her best friend, Mickey Mouse

And...."That's all for today.  See you tomorrow kids"