That was an unfortunate choice of hairstyles...

Ben's biological grandma gave us a gift several years ago for Christmas - a little Christmas photo album:

I've never had time to print off pictures and put them in there; we just display the album every single year, with nothing inside. I decided to start remedying that situation. I didn't want to spend too much money or time, so I only scanned two years' worth of Christmases to put into the album. Next year, I'll scan two more years and put them in. And so on. I thought it might be fun to put the scanned pics on here for you to see.

This was our first Christmas together, Christmas of 2000. We were set to get married a couple of weeks later. We spent it at my parents' house in I.F.:

Me and my sisters:

We spent the following Christmas, our first married Christmas, at Ben's mom and stepdad's house up in Washington. We took our two dogs with us. (Thinking back, Gloria, that was so RUDE of us! We should have kenneled them! I'm so sorry! What an inconvenience!!!) Their names were Gromit and Doc:

Gromit died right after Dylan was born, of thyroid disease. Grom was the BEST. Doc went crazy after Gromit died and started growling and snapping at Dylan. We had to take her to the animal adoption place. Dog, or baby? Baby. So that's what became of them.

Ben's stepbrother, Danny, and his fam were also there that Christmas. They had a baby, Ethan. Ohhh, he was so cute. How I love babies. Look at the crazy nasty hair I had:

What was I thinking?

So not flattering, Kar. So not flattering. It sure was easy to do, though...

Greg and Gloria:

Greg and Ethan:

Gloria and Ethan:

We went sledding one day when we were there. Greg:

Gloria and a gal who was living with them at the time, Miriam:

Look at this goatee. Oh my:

What happened to Ben and me in that first year? We were so cute! And then, bam. We got hit with the ugly stick.

Ben looked at these pictures and was so enamored of his goatee.

Ben: Oh, I totally need to grow my goatee out again. That was freakin' AWESOME.

Me: No it wasn't. It looked ridiculous. I couldn't stand it.

Ben: I looked like I could be in a motorcycle gang or something!

Me: Or used as stuffing in a quilt...

Anyways. It was fun to sled down memory hill for a bit. These pics made me so homesick for Gloria's house. We wanted to go up there this Christmas so badly, but it's just hard to drive for so long with so many kids. Plus the gas expense and everything. So we stayed here. We had a blast here, but we sure missed you, Glo!