Last of the Christmas Pics

Here's the last Christmas pictures. These are from our Christmas party at Grandmother's.

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An update will be coming soon...

More Christmas Pics...

I was planning on posting pics yesterday, but our Internet was down. Here they are...

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Tex was with us for Christmas.
Later that day we went to our friends, the Heinses, for a Christmas party.

Singing Christmas carols.

This is the first picture on our blog taken from a cell phone (I, Jesse, got one for Christmas).
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More Christmas pics will be coming, as well "2006 in Review" pictures...

Christmas Pics

Most of you can forgive us for the late pictures. We have been very busy. However, we don't have much on the schedule for a while, so we should be able to post Christmas pictures, as well as other pictures from our 2006.

Anyway, here's the first round of pictures. These are from Christmas at our house...

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We tried a new thing this year. Our grandparents in Arizona don't get to see our Christmas usually (except through the blog), so we set up a web-cam and microphone so they could join us.

More pictures later...

Countdown to Christmas: Day 0

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Merry Christmas!!

From the Kawell Family

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Countdown to Christmas: Day 1

It's Christmas Eve! We're are having our Christmas party right now, so this will be short. Today, we played some football and watched some football (Bears win again!). We finished our work yesterday, so it was a quiet day. Everyone has had a great day! Hope everyone has had a great day too, and we'll see you tomorrow!!!

Countdown to Christmas: Day 2

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve! Today will be a busy day as we prepare for the weekend. We will be having a Christmas Eve party at our house with some friends of ours, so we will be cleaning the house and getting ready for the holiday. Last night, we went to see a house near by that has it Christmas lights set to music. We saw something similar at the zoo, but this house had more songs. I'm sure many of our readers have seen videos of such houses. They're pretty cool.

Sneak peek: After Christmas, and after the Christmas pictures are posted, we will be posting random pictures of 2006. It has been a fun year, and we would like to share it with our readers as we get nearer to 2007.

Countdown to Christmas: Day 3

10...9...8...7...6...5...4...3...

Christmas is coming fast!! Yesterday and the day before, we did a lot of shopping, and today we finished. There are some excited people in this house! Tuesday evening (19th) we went to the Birmingham zoo where they have the whole place covered in Christmas lights. They even had one section set up so that the lights blinked in time to music! It was great.

Again, pictures are coming on to the camera very fast and I haven't even got them off yet, so pictures will be late in coming. I might have a chance to get some posted tomorrow, but if I don't do so, you'll have to wait until after Christmas. Sorry...

Countdown to Christmas: Day 6

The "Countdown to Christmas" posts have been a lot of fun and we will continue to try and post up until Christmas. However, this is a warning that as the days get busier as Christmas gets closer I don't know how often we will get a chance to post. The pictures that we've been promising may not get on here till after Christmas unless I get some time to get them together. We've had good responses to the Countdown, and I'll try to keep posting, but I can't promise anything!

Countdown to Christmas: Day 7

Goodness, when was the last time we updated?! Christmas is coming in fast and we are scrambling to get ready. On Wednesday, we went to a walk-through-nativity at Briarwood church. We have been doing this for years. They have scenes from Christ's life from the prophets to the resurrection with actors and lots of live animals! We did take some pictures and we will try to put them up before Christmas!
Merry Christmas!!

Countdown to Christmas: Day 12

The twelve days of Christmas have started! Get out your partridges and pear trees! This is one of our newer traditions. The basket with the straw in it symbolizes the manger were the Baby Jesus slept on the night of his birth. It is hard to see in this picture, but in the corner there is a little pail of straw. Whenever someone in the family does a voluntary good deed for someome else they can privately put a piece of straw in the basket. On Christmas morning, Mama puts a doll in the basket to symbolize Jesus sleeping on our good deeds!

Countdown to Christmas: Day 17

The air has turned Christmas-y!! This morning the temps got down to 19 degrees (which is cold down here, for you northern folks!). The fireplace is doing its job and hot chocolate is flowing. We hope everyone is having a great season so far!

(More pictures coming...)

Countdown to Christmas: Day 19

Last night we lit the second candle of Advent. We have been busy makeing gifts for everyone on our list. Many of our readers will receive them. We'll have more decoration pictures later.

Countdown to Christmas: Day 20, Part II

This is a follow-up to the last post. We will be posting pictures of our decorated house as parts of some of the future "Countdown to Christmas" posts. Here's the first one:

Countdown to Christmas: Day 20

We are hoping to put some pictures up of our house all 'dressed up' for Christmas! Mama does such a wonderful job every year! Everyone seems to enjoy the decorations so much that we thought our readers might like to see it too, since not everyone can visit this time of year. I (Abigail) will try my hardest to get some pictures today. (Maybe promising will help motivate me!)

Countdown to Christmas: Day 21

Before I go into Christmas stuff, I just want to tell everyone that Mama is doing great after her minor surgery to remove bone spurs in her shoulder. If you didn't know about this, it's because it was a minor thing.

Well, yesterday we had church and, of course, sing plenty of Christmas songs. As a family we are learning great 4 part harmony: Abigail sings soprano, Mama sings alto, Sam is learning tenor, and I (Jesse) sing bass. It is beautiful to hear, and especially fun with all the wonderful Christmas songs.

I must mention that yesterday (Sunday) the Chicago Bears clinched the division title and will be going to the playoffs!! Go Bears!

Countdown to Christmas: Day 23

Nathan has a Lego advent calender which he is using to count the days until Christmas. His calendar gave me an idea to put a countdown on the blog. We'll just post small things that are going on in our lives as we near Christmas. The posts won't be long, they'll just have a small tidbit of our holiday preparation. We'll see if we remember to update it!

Last Christmas Party

Last Saturday we closed out Christmas with Christmas at Grandmothers. Uncle Mark and his family, (Leigh, Robbie, and Zeke) were there. Mary, Dave, Sarah, and the gorgeous Evelyn along with Aunt Pam were also there. We had a great time. There was great food. Believe it or not the apartment was more then adequate for everyone. The star of the party was of course baby Evelyn who everyone wanted to hold, love, watch, and listen to. She handled the day like a trooper and so did here parents.

Hope you enjoy the pictures: Click here or go to the Christmas 2005 album at right and click on Calk Christmas.

Christmas Pictures

We have found a way to create online photo albums that will make it easier for all of our readers to view large amounts of pictures. Some albums that are ready for viewing are in the sidebar to the right under the heading "Photo Albums." We will continue to share pictures in this way. When you click on an album you will be brought to a list of photos that you can click on to enlarge. (Some albums such as "Christmas 2005" have smaller albums in them and you will see a list of those sub-albums first.) Once you enlarge a picture there are arrows at the top-right of the page to go to the next or previous picture. If you have problems feel free to contact us! Enjoy!!

Christmas at home

It has been a busy week! We're all very tired and there is still New Years to come!! Anyway, right now everyone is playing with Christmas toys and relaxing after the wonderful weekend. Christmas started Saturday afternoon when we had a Christmas Eve party at our house. We had Grandmother and Aunt Pam over for dinner. There was ham, baked beans, potato salad, garlic bread, pineapple slices and more. For dessert there was rum cake, hot apple cider and lots of cookies! After the party we went to bed all excited. It took a while for some of us to get to sleep! In the morning everyone was up early to open the gifts. After that we had hot cinnamon rolls and egg casserole. Aunt Pam came over again for a while and we had a quiet morning. After breakfast we went to Grandmothers house and spent some wonderful time with her. From there we went to our friends the Hienss' house, were we had a potluck supper, sang carols and watched the Chicago Bears football team win their Christmas game! It was a wonderful Christmas!

Decorating the tree

We got the Christmas tree this morning and this evening we decorated it. It is a tradition of ours to get the tree and decorate it the day after Thanksgiving. Here are a few pictures of us decorating.

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