::sniff:: Merry...

..... ::cough:: Christmas!! ::cough, cough, sniff::

The Annual Christmas Eve PJ Party! We gather, eat wonderful party food, and do a lot of laughing. Pictured here are Lok, Poodle, Amy, Jay, Jmk, PopPop, SueSue, and Tooter. Please notice the distant eyes of the feverish Poodle, the "I'm ready to go to bed" cries of Tooter, and my lovingly redecorated Christmas tree complete with 5 or 6 decorations on one branch. I think Martha Stewart is jealous, frankly.

I do hope everyone had a wonderful, peaceful, and fun day yesterday. And, if you're like us, and have another celebration to go, I hope it goes well!!! The rest of the Zoo is in varying stages of some cold virus yucky thing. Praise the Lord, the Zoo Mommy hasn't caught it. [spoke too soon! We're all down now!] But it actually kept Zoo Daddy out of the woods this morning. Not good!!!

We actually have been able to do shortened versions of everything so far. Poodle's fever started Christmas Eve, and was making her feel poopy Christmas morning. But in her normal good nature, she wasn't too bad fussy.

The only thing we've had to miss out on was seeing a college friend who is in town today. She has 2 younger munchkins and rightly didn't want to expose them to whatever this current bug is. Especially her baby. I hated having to miss them, but I did encourage them not to come. Knowing that I helped to infect her little ones would have been no fun. But, other than that, we've been able to do everything else!

We have one more family gathering tomorrow night (my side), and then the festive decorations will be put away for another year. We have had fun this year - Santa Claus was a little more real for our 3 year old, even if she wasn't all that interested in anything except being held Christmas morning.

And everyone has been so good to us...... we are so blessed to be a part of our families!

However, as our preacher said Sunday morning, there is no better gift that a person can give another person than the gift of the Good News of the birth, life, death and ressurection of the Lord Jesus. Praise God for that!!!