Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas to all of our friends! We are blessed to have so many dear friends near and far. We love each one of you!
2009 has been a “calm” year for us, at least compared to the past two years. No moving to a new state, finding a new job or remodeling a house.
Abianne (7) says that the best thing of the year was riding her first roller coaster at the Enchanted Forest. The Enchanted Forrest is miniature amusement park about an hour from where we live.
Aubrie's (5) top event was starting her first year of Sparks (AWANA) on Thursday nights.
Emilie (4) enjoyed the week that the three oldest girls spent at Christy's mom's house near Seattle this summer and going to their church's Vacation Bible Adventure with their aunts.
Natasha (2) just likes to do whatever her big sisters are doing whether she should be doing it or not. She definitely makes more messes and gets into more scrapes than any other of our other kids did when they were 2 years old.
Reading through past Christmas letters we realized that every year our “big news” was announcing either the birth of a new Stone or that we were expecting another baby. This year is no exception. The surprising thing about the new Stone baby this year is that he was a boy! David Fredrick (10 months) is such a sweet and happy baby. He should be, he gets LOTS of attention from his sisters! While giving David a kiss Abianne said “Too bad people can't stay cute when they are all grown up.” Once after David sneezed Aubrie said “Ah, the baby just blowed a chew!” While Christy was changing David's diaper Emilie asked “Can you get David away from here? He is making me stink!”
Christy started couponing this year and is having way too much fun with it. The chore of grocery shopping has turned into a form of entertainment. It is wearing off on the kids, they now think that you can buy things in two ways, use coupons or use money. Abianne was making sentences using spelling words for school one today. One of her words was "price". The sentence she came up with was: "The price is $15.27, or $12.27 if you have a coupon."
Nathan's highlight this year was hiking the Middle Sister (elevation 10,047 ft) with his 15 year old brother Sam, boyhood friend Eric and our friends David & Sarah Rees who were visiting from Florida. They spent one night on the mountain and had an adventure hiking out in the dark. Pictures are available.
As in past years we would like to leave you with some of the wit and wisdom our kids have shared with us this year.
Abianne is playing with her little sister Natasha and Christy says that it is like playing with your own doll. Abianne responds with, “But who would make a doll this cute?”
Aubrie “I don't know if I can be a real princess, there are not many kings and queens in Oregon.”
Emilie “My doll needs to be the sister not the mom because she is roller skating and moms don't roller skate.”
When our kids get to the stage they start repeating everything we like to say to them "I'm a parrot" because it is cute to hear them repeat it. Christy tried this for the first time with Tasha. Christy, "I'm a parrot." Tasha replies, "Go away parrot!"
We hope you have a wonderful Christmas this year celebrating the birth of Christ.
Love,
Nathan, Christy, Abianne, Aubrie, Emilie, Natasha & David Stone