Happy New Year!

Back to the grindstone! We made it through the holidays in one piece and we're back home again. Thank Heaven! I love my family very much and enjoy spending time with them, but when we're all crammed in one house  (even though it was pretty good sized) for more than a day or two, things tend to get "dramatique", if you get my drift. I always love to go and I'm always glad to get home again.

We got to Elko on Friday night, and of course, Christmas Eve was the next day. We had portrait appointments at noon, and then we put the turkey and ham in the oven and headed to the park for a family game of kickball. It was a lot of fun, and after we decided not to keep score, the kids settled down to just enjoy themselves. We try to teach them that not everything is a competition. Here are a few photos.

This is the 2's team, with my son, Andy, getting ready to blast the ball into oblivion.

This is most of the 1's team. A few of the younger ones were AWOL.

Our youngest grandson, SJ, wandered the outfield a lot, usually in the company of one of the dogs, and we had to keep calling him back. He's a real cutie, almost 2.

SJ and Alex's new Christmas puppy, Quasimodo, getting a little too far away.

Rafferty gets ready to give the ball a good, swift kick!

I have way too many photos to post here, so I'll stop with these. But we did have a good time. Two of the boys had to go to their dad's house after we opened gifts on Christmas morning, so I hurried everyone into some big, family group shots. This is everyone in my family except one granddaughter, Airika, who stayed in Tennessee. Not a bad looking family, huh?

Twenty-five Halls (and Cooks, Smiths, Stevens and Simmons.)

My beautiful grandchildren.

Well, that's enough for now. I'll be back tomorrow to show you our traditional Christmas breakfast and a few projects I did with the kids over the holidays. We had fun! The only problem is, I kept forgetting to take pictures of them in the process, so mostly I just have pictures of the projects themselves. Oh, well, it'll have to do. See you tomorrow, and remember as you go through the new year, with all its new (and old) problems, that with God, nothing is impossible. Luke 1:37 Hope you are all off to a good start in the new year.