Florida's Tree City

Our little town of Windermere was named "Florida's Tree City". The town of Windermere had a ceremony today. Conner's class went to the ceremony and sang songs. It was very cold this morning when we woke up, 39 degrees. It was about 46 degrees when we got to the ceremony. Everyone was complaining, just a couple of days ago it was almost 80 degrees so it is hard to adjust when the temperature changes so drastically. In the video Conner is standing behind the boy with the yellow jacket and in front of his teacher in the light blue sweater.

Having a snack

Planting a tree

Three Kings Day (Dia de los Reyes)

Today we celebrated Three Kings Day. The night before, January 5th we collect grass in a bowl and we put water in another bowl for the camels to eat and drink. We place them by the front door and during the night the wisemen or kings come and leave a little gift for the kids. Some families have a big celebration on this day but growing up in Puerto Rico my family's big celebration was at Christmas and on Three Kings Day we would always get something small.

Lego Love

Yesterday I took Parker to the Lego Store at Downtown Disney. I normally don't take pictures of stores but they had some really cool sculptures of legos and bionicles. Parker loves legos, so we went to get him a small gift for "Three Kings Day" which is coming up next week. Conner is following in Parker's footsteps, he also loves legos but he could not go with us because he believes in the Three Kings, like Santa Claus. We are looking forward to visiting Lego Land this year.

Happy Birthday Ashley!!!!

Ashley was born at 5:16 P.M. on December 29, 1985. She weighed 8 lbs 7 oz and was 20 3/4 in long. All of the babies in the nursery at the hospital had very little hair, but Ashley had a full head of hair. The nurses loved her hair and kept making comments about it. It is amazing that it has been 23 years. We have seen her grow into a wonderful young woman and are thankful for the joy she has brought and continues to bring to our family. I have a lot of pictures of her growing up but here are a few of my favorites. Happy 23rd Birthday Ashley!!!!!

Feliz Navidad, Merry Christmas

We hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas. We had a wonderful time. Later in the day we took the kids to Disney World's Hollywood Studios for a couple of hours and went on the Toy Story ride. We all like that ride. Here are some pictures of Christmas and Disney.

Christmas celebration

When we lived in California we loved going to uncle Steve's house on Christmas eve where we had a children's nativity and the kids decorated sugar cookies. This year we decided to invite some members of our ward and my cousin Esther and her girls to our house where we had dinner and we also had the children's nativity and the kids got to decorate sugar cookies. We also had a talent show and the kids got to show off their talents. I am so glad we did it. It was hard work to get ready for so many people but we had such a good time. We wish we could be closer to all of our families at this time of year to celebrate with all of them.

































































Today we went to the temple which is across the street from our meeting house after church to take some pictures of our family. The weather was perfect, it was a beautiful day. Of course the family is not complete, Ashley is in Utah for Christmas.

The Festival of the Nativity

Every year our Stake has The Festival of the Nativity. We all get to bring our Nativities and display them, we also have crafts for the primary children and a musical program in the Chapel. This year we had a special display by a member of our Ward, Sister Margie Olsen, she painted a beautiful picture of her grandchildren, you may have seen it since it was used on the cover of The Friend magazine this December. She is funny and likes to wear a different hat every Sunday, she told me she has enough hats that she could wear a different one every Sunday for two years. The ward calls her and she even calls herself the "hat lady".