A family gift exchange...

We were going to wait until we were "in the clear" from sickness for a few days before we had our family gift exchange.  But...there was a little person in our house who has missed so much this last few months...and has been so patient...but her little countenance fell when Daddy suggested that maybe we should wait until later this week to exchange gifts.  So, Mommy and Daddy discussed it, and while neither of us were feeling great, there was no way to know how long it would be before we were all healthy.  There was no Christmas music playing in the house...no dainty appetizers in the kitchen...nobody was wearing Christmas colors...but there were presents under the tree, so why not open them?  Here's the excited little one ready to open some Christmas presents: 

Actually, we had 2 excited little ones.  Gretchen gets presents at Christmas time, too.  We usually forget her birthday, but when the tree goes up in the basement and colorful boxes and bags start appearing beneath it, she knows what's going on.  One night, Mike had to scold her because she had sniffed out one of her gifts and was about to snitch it from under the tree!

Gretchen got to be the first one to open a gift:

We are usually pretty "practical" about Christmas presents, but this year we got Beth Marie something very special.  We bought her an entire wardrobe of old fashioned doll dresses that were handmade by my niece, Dorothy Rowe.  They are SO beautiful.  I separated them into 3 packages.  Beth was absolutely overwhelmed with excitement when she saw how many beautiful new clothes she had for her favorite dolls!

Here, Beth is modeling a couple of the dresses on her two favorite dolls.  Here is Beth with Naomi:

And here she is with Kirsten:

Here is Daddy opening his much wanted "walking stick" which was intended for an upcoming adventure that he was planning. You'll probably have to visit his blog to read more about that:



And here I am with Beth Marie and the beautiful primitive doll that she gave me:

 

We had a very nice time together exchanging gifts.  And as we get better, we'll have to sit down with the calendar and begin to reschedule visits to the many people that we didn't get to see at Christmas time.  :-)