Christmas

This year Christmas lasted about 5 days for us and it was filled with family, friends, food and fun. Marty, Josie and I started off Christmas Eve morning by volunteering at Operation Sack Lunch (http://www.opsacklunch.org/ ) This is a great organization that Marty has had the privilege of sitting on its board for the past year or so. They feed the majority of Seattle's homeless population every day of the year. We both figured that it is never to early to start volunteering and were so happy that Josie was allowed to come and help. Benjamin, unfortunately, was too young and had to stay home with Julie. Hopefully he will have the chance to come next year or the year after. We are hoping to make this an annual tradition.

Marty did some dishes and worked in the kitchen.

Josie and I stuffed a ton of bags with basic essentials (soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, wipes, instant coffee, socks, etc) and wrapped them as gifts.

Josie then was in charge of handing out cookies to each person. She took her job quite seriously. When the line had died down she took off her gloves because we had assumed she was done. A few minutes later a man came up to her and asked her for a cookie. She told him "no". She frantically came looking for us to put gloves back on her so she could serve him a cookie :)

When we got home, Josie discovered that Santa had come while we were gone...And then the craziness began. Gifts for everyone.

Even a t-shirt for Benjamin. Julie wants him to remember that he is her boyfriend!

Josie LOVED unwrapping everyone's gifts and Benjamin LOVED playing with the paper. A good combination this year. Not sure how well it will go next year when Benjamin wants to unwrap his own gifts.

Later on that day we headed down to Marty's parent's house for the traditional Christmas Eve celebration. Great job hosting, Oma!!!

And for the final Christmas celebration this year, we headed up to Bellingham on the 26th to spend some time with the Wiley's and Grandma and Papa. Thanks for hosting, Kim. We all had a great time.

Uncle Fred and Benjamin

Jon and Josie

The girls