Christmas Party

Thursday night was our care group's Christmas party. It was a lot of fun with great food. We had a gift exchange and I have to say we got the best gift we have ever gotten, a palm pilot! We haven't figured out how to work it too well. But, Andrew has been able to play many games of Solitare on it so far. The picture at the top is of the couples in our care group minus 6 kids and 2 on the way. We definitely get our baby fix when we go to Bible study. :)

Christmas Tree

During the week after Thanksgiving, we went to the local fire station and picked out our Christmas tree. We brought it home to decorate it. And here is the before picture.


Around 10:30 that night, while we were putting on the lights, the tree stand decided it didn't want to work anymore and the whole tree fell over. Fortunately, I have ninja-fast arms (similar to go-go-gaget arms) and I caught it before it shattered our glass table. So, we had to make a Wal-Mart stop at 10:45 to get a new stand. We eventually got the stand and the tree decorated and now it looks beautiful in our living room. (except the bottom left half of the tree blinks on an off for some random reason.)

The Fish in our Lives

I just wanted to introduce you to some other members of our family. They are not your normal mammal friends, but rather they live in Andrew's 20 gallon salt water tank. (Don't worry, I will post pictures of his 175 gallon tank when he is done working on it.)

This is our Thorny Oyster. No, we have not checked for a pearl. We got him with another piece of coral a while ago and thought he was just a round rock. But, then he started opening up bigger and bigger. And now he has a pink mouth that opens up.


This is Toby the Goby. He digs a lot in his cave and always looks like a grump. We got him a pistol shrimp to be friends with, but we can't find him. So, things are not looking good for the shrimp. They are supposed to form a symbiotic relationship and look after each other.


This is Spot. He is a Domino Damsel. He is fun to watch. And he has grown a lot!




This is Frog Spawn coral. Obviously, it is called this because it looks like frog eggs.

This is our Electic Flame Scallop. He is really cool to watch. When he wants to move, it looks like he is sneezing and he pushes himself around. The even cooler part of him is the electic flame. You can kind of see it in the second picture. It is a pinkish/purplish line that goes across his "mouth". It flashes like a strobe light.

We have a bunch of hermit crabs to keep the tank clean.

And this is our Brain Coral. It is fun to watch him eat something. He catches it with his tentacles and then pushes it into his "mouth" in the center of his body.

There are lots of other things living in our tank like algae, sponges, mushrooms and feather dusters. I never knew how fun a fish tank could be. (Or how dorky this makes me look.)