Merry Christmas!

We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!! Travis and I left for Australia on Wed. Dec. 16th and returned Christmas afternoon. So we celebrated on Boxing Day. Grammy and Yaya watched the kiddos at our house while we 'honeymooned'. Grammy flew out before we arrived home. Yaya got to stay and celebrated with us. There will be plenty of details to follow.
Here is the Christmas card we sent out this year:And the letter. It is scanned and hard to read, so I've re-written it out below:Greetings! This year we are saying BOO to our annual Christmas letter! Our life is much more interesting in terms of ‘Thumbs up’ and ‘Thumbs down’. The story goes that many years ago when we team taught Sunbeams (the 3 year old Sunday school class at church) we used ‘Thumbs up’ and ‘Thumbs down’ to basically describe gospel principals. For example, “Sue listened to her mommy…thumbs up!” or “Johnny told a lie…thumbs down!” This practice followed us into parenthood and for explaining, well, just about anything! So here is our 1st annual “Thumbs up! Thumbs down!” list of 2009.


Thumb up: Orders to go to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
Thumb Down: Having to finish the house and say goodbye

Thumb up: Finishing the house
Thumb Down: Travis putting up siding in -45F weather

Thumb up: Selling the house!!!!
Thumb Down: Letting go of our first house

Thumb up: Moving to Dayton, Ohio!! Visiting Papa on the way
Thumb Down: Driving through Illinois

Thumb up: WE LOVE DAYTON, so much to do and see!!!
Thumb Down: That we love Dayton too much

Thumb up: Found out where the Children’s Hospital is
Thumb Down: Backpack getting stitches in his thumb

Thumb up: Dynomite loves to dance
Thumb Down: Saving money now to afford it later

Thumb up: Trouble is a whiz kid at preschool
Thumb Down: He’s outsmarting his parents already

Thumb up: Dynomite potty trains herself
Thumb Down: In her words, “But Trouble gets to stand”….

Thumb up: Denay & kids went home to visit tons of people
Thumb Down: Not too many invites to come back next year…

Thumb up: Travis went to Alaska to see Dad
Thumb Down: Travis brought home 40lbs of Salmon

Thumb up: Our ward is AWESOME!!
Thumb Down: We’ll be moving again in 2011

Thumb up: Travis finished his 1st Masters in Space Studies
Thumb Down: Just in time to start 2nd Masters in Space Systems

Thumb up: Denay writes for Examiner.com
Thumb Down: Free time is out the window

Thumb up: We hit 100 posts on our blog
Thumb Down: Not many comments…hint, hint…

Thumb up: Travis & Denay going to Australia for Christmas!!!
Thumb Down: Kids get to hang with the Grandmas!


We had Christmas pictures done. We opted to have studio portraits because of the weather, otherwise we would've had then done outside again.

Christmas wouldn't be complete without a screaming baby with Santa.

We went to The Greene and paid to have this picture taken. No discounts for uncooperative kids!!Not more than a week later we discovered free Walmart pictures with Santa.Travis was just there for moral support ;-)