On Christmas Day the Millers got together at my brother's place. It was a different Christmas because the weather was not very agreeable. My parents got stuck coming off of the highway onto the gravel, so the boys took the tractor and pulled them out and cleared the road a little better. Andrew and Brian both had to work, and they had thought that they should be able to be there for the noon dinner. However, the bunks at the feedlot were full of snow, and no feeding could be done until they were shoveled out. Six of their friends came by and shoveled snow for 3 hours. Even so, they did not get off work before 6 p.m. So we waited to have our gift exchange until after supper. Here are a few pictures of the day.

Hanging out and visiting is always enjoyable.

A busy game of Dutch Blitz.

Rook is always fun.

Karen and Crystal.

Juanita and Karen.

In the evening we had a short program before opening our gifts. Here are most of the cousins singing a Christmas song.

That got Jamie and Riley in a singing mood, so they sang for all the rooms. (They would be asked to leave one room because they had quite a bit of volume, so they went to another until they were toned down there.)

I'm sure we will always remember this Christmas as being the one with lots of snow and wind where we could hardly make it to be together even though no one from out of state was here except for Karen, and she came in Tuesday night before the weather got bad.

  My "baby" sister turned 50 today. Last night we all got together to celebrate this milestone. Dad has a birthday coming up on Tuesday, so we also gave him his gift: a digital camera.

Mom had asked me a few weeks ago if old folks like them could learn to operate a digital. I told her that I'm sure Dad can figure it out because he knows how to text!

We decided to give it to him first thing so he could experiment with it and get familiar with it before Christmas.

The birthday girl. We had pizza and lots of other wonderful food that I didn't think to photograph. But she was told to go through the line first since it's her birthday. She about didn't know how to act!

Gus ~ her youngest grandson. He always has a smile.

We have a family tradition to give the amount of presents as the years that mark these famous birthdays (40, 50, etc.) She had lots of help to open her gifts. In fact, she opened very few of them herself.

She was the recipient of one of the JOY banners I made a couple weeks ago.

When I was wrapping Darla's gifts, it occured to me that I didn't give Rose a birthday present this year and she should have the other banner. She was quite pleased and surprised.

Today Ryan got his driver's liscense. When the lady who was issuing the lisence asked him if he wants to be an organ donar, he thought for some time. Finally he responded very seriously, "I think I'll just keep them for now."