Remaining Branches

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Christmas 2008

I took a few pictures of our Christmas decorations since only Jon and Suzy will get to see them this year. They're our only visitors before Christmas who will get to see the tree. We got a decent amount of snow last night, so it finally feels like Christmas is almost here. We'll see how long the snow lasts, but our apartment complex actually got the plow out for the first time this winter.

Us with our tree.

Our new name ornaments from Bronner's.

The 2008 ornament from my mom.

My favorite ornament. A little pink because of the Great Christmas Flood!

My shepherd sheep.

My new Christmas sheep.

The three snow men that Oma made.

My African nativity scene from Katie.

My sheepie nativity scene.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Family Pictures 2008

At the end of October, my sister's boyfriend Kyle, took our family pictures. They turned out really great and we even used one for our Christmas card. I thought I'd post a few of them for your pleasure. See Kyle's website for more of what he does.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Greenfield Village in Winter

Last weekend we went on the snowiest day so far this winter to Greenfield Village. The Village is decorated for Christmas and the Henry Ford Museum has a giant Christmas tree and model trains with gingerbread houses. We wanted to see these things and didn't have anything going on last Saturday. We bundled up and braved the snow to see what we could. There were very few people at the Village, but that allowed us to listen to the docents without a lot of people around. We enjoyed ourselves a lot and even had quite a conversation about cows and sheep with the two farmers at the barn.

The last picture in the slide show (of Brian holding his hands up with one measley light lit up) is my favorite. Just before I snapped the picture, he had all the lights lit up, but the picture was just a bit too slow! I think it's funny that he is so excited, but you only see one light lit up. :)

Thanksgiving 2008

School is finally done for the semester, so I can focus on other things (like this blog!). We've done a few interesting things since the last time I posted, so I'm going to work on catching up.

We spent the Thanksgiving weekend in Grand Rapids so that we could spend time with our families. On Thanksgiving we had lunch with Brian's family and dinner with the Branderhorst (my mom's side) family. Friday we spent the day shopping (!!) for our camera and a few other things. Saturday I worked on homework while Brian attempted to fix the car (which didn't end up working) and had the Ponstein Christmas party in the evening. After the party, I went to visit with my girl friends since one was home from China after two years. Sunday we had lunch with my family and then came back to Belleville.

We had a great time while we were home, but were glad to come back to our apartment. When we got back, we set up our tree and Christmas decorations over the next few days. I'll have pictures of those sometime soon. For now, enjoy some pictures from our new camera of the Ponstein Christmas party.