Christmas Eve

 As always we had a Christmas Eve party past night.  It was put on by the school, the church and the youth group working together.  They did a beautiful job.  I will be posting some pictures over on Lemuel's Blog later today but for now here are some of Ani and the rest of us. 

 All dressed up for the party (yes that's the same dress she wore to the wedding:)).  

She is standing next to her new ornament from Mema. 

 With Tati Bobo and the cat

 

 Twirling to the music at the party

 With the kids who were waiting to go sing.

One of the teachers lent Ani his Santa hat.

 The family :)

No smile but she's precious none the less.

 The matching musicians, Sam ad Manis.

Asleep under the tree.

 An angel when she's asleep.

 

This morning when she woke up there was a surprise waiting for her in the other room.

"Is she for me momma?!"

" I love my baby!"

She named her new doll Princess.  

More photos to come... but I want to get these up before it gets any later.

The Wedding

 On Saturday Ani was in another wedding.  I think I lost about three years off my life stressing over her hair which totally did NOT work the way I was planning but in the end I thought she looked pretty darn cute :)

 All dressed up and ready to go.

 

At the church... she wanted me to take a picture of her holding out her dress :)

Just goofing off waiting for everyone to get to the church.

 

She did it!  She walked down the aisle!

We hung out outside for the rest of the wedding.

 All the stress behind us.  The dress and shoes came off as soon as we got back to Wawa's house!

Progress!!!

 Last week Dad, Don and Dennis Keeney, and Rick Bucklew came down to work on our house!!!  They got a ton of stuff done!  We also had the huge surprise of being able to put in tile floors!  We hadn't expected to be able to to that for a long time yet... if at all!

 

 Ani enjoying the house :)

 The solar panels are installed and the electrical system is working!

The front of the house

 Looking out from the dining room

The rock wall Guilbert made for me!!!  It's not quite finished but already beautiful!

Looking down the hallway to the bedroom.  

Bathroom on the left, pantry/storage on the right.

 The shower in progress

 

Looking out from the bedroom 

 Looking down the hallway from the room.

Praise God!  We're getting closer!!!

The Roof has Been Poured!

This Thursday we were finally able to pour the cement roof on our house.  Here are a few pictures...

  Setting up the form and the beams to hold it up is three-quarters of the battle. 

Two metal workers from PauP worked with the guys here to do all this metal work.

Why I love this land so much... the view.

The cement mixer that was given to Lemuel by friends in Ohio made quick work of the concrete pouring part... it only took 6 hours as opposed to the 12-18 that it would have taken if they were mixing by hand.  Thank you Keeneys!!!

The first bucket of concrete on its way to be poured

 A chain forms and they begin passing the buckets down the line

The engineer supervising the work 

 

Ani supervising the work :)

 

 The last few buckets of concrete being poured... yay!!!

Afternoon at the Beach

 

Well, it is 11:30 but I am waiting for it to be midnight so I can download a huge file with no bandwidth limits so I thought I'd go ahead and post some pics from today.

This afternoon we went to the beach.

It was really, really dirty as a lot of trash and seaweed had washed up...

 But there was a pretty clean area at the far end so we set up there.

Ani loves, loves, LOVES the ocean.  She had lots of fun.

 

Despite not being able to get in the water myself, I managed to get some family pictures.
(I was feelin' the sepia tonight)

 I tried the "self" family portrait... 

...but then fortunately Krischelle stepped in and helped :)

 

...and a color one because the ocean is too beautiful to not throw in one to show the color!

 While there Krischelle and I found quite a few neat things that had washed up... coral, sea urchins, sea fans, and the like.  This was Ani's "treasure"... yes, that is an orange shampoo bottle top.  Krischelle had her make a pirate face to take a picture with her "booty".