Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday

This past week, we celebrated Christmas with the rest of the world. We were blessed to wake up and find that we were going to celebrate a Colorado White Christmas. There was an inch of snow on the ground and it came down hard all day. It was a traditional DeVries Christmas celebration. Wake up and open stockings, eat cinnamon rolls, read the Christmas story, open presents, eat Christmas dinner, go out to Mom and Dad's and have the family gift exchange, eat another Christmas dinner, lay around in misery, etc.! Oh yeah; Dad DeVries hooked up the sleds to the back of the truck and pulled everybody around out in the pasture for a good time of sledding. The kids were freezing by the time it was over but wanted go out and hit it again. Ah Christmas!!! As usual, it was all great!! Matt's in laws were in from Germany so we had a lot of fun with them. Everybody got what they wanted for the most part; we definitely all got way more than we need. One significant gift was our family gift to ourselves that I mentioned on last week's blog. We chose not to get individual gifts for the kids (even though they are now at the stage where they get substantial gifts for each other!) or for each other. Instead, we had a home theater installed in our basement. 52" plasma TV, surround sound, powered sub woofer, etc. We've really enjoyed watching the Nuggets and Broncos in High Definition TV and we've enjoyed watching movies together as a family on the big screen. When you have teenagers, you think of ways to give them reasons to stay at home as much as possible; this is what we came up with. We hope to enjoy this for a long time.

Last Wednesday Michael turned 11 years old. He's doing great, and we are all proud of him. We went snow shoeing with Matt, Dad, Jason and Connie (Matt's Dad-in-law). Michael and Jason got ahead of us on the trail and almost got lost; we were all very relieved to find them walking out in the middle of a frozen mountain lake. They both received the lecture of their lives, believe me!!! Michael had 2 of his friends over for the night and had a good time with them as well.

Hope you had a Merry Christmas! Don't forget to look at the pictures at the bottom of the blog.

Your servant for Christ's sake,

MJD,Sr.

A baby, a concert, a birthday and another driver

This past month has been a very busy one. First, we welcomed little Lily LeeAnn Esch to our church family. Lily was born just five hours after her grandfather, Bill, passed away. Ryan and Krista decided to induce Krista's labor so Lily could be born before Ryan's father passed away, but God saw fit to give Bill the chance to see Lily's birth from heaven instead. We will miss Bill but welcome little Lily to this world. She is a cutie!

The kids wrapped up their fall semester of school. Dennae and Ivy had their recital with their teacher, Malia. Dennae played an arrangement of "It Is Well" on the piano. Jami played in the orchestra concert, Ivy in the band concert, and Michael played his tuba in the 5th grace band concert. They did really well. I forgot to take the camera for Jami's concert and for the recital so I don't have any pictures. We are having Michael's tuba chem-cleaned over the Christmas break. It will cost $150! Who said raising kids ain't expensive!!!!? It's a very special tuba we recieved from Noel's grandpa who played it in his church orchestra. He is excelling at playing it (so are the girls on their instruments as well).

Noel turned 43 on December 8th. She's really enjoying real estate and is doing quite a good job. She was "salesman of the month" for the month of December. Dennae got her driver's license this past Thursday and hasn't quit driving since she got it. We were able to purchase a nice Mazda Protege for her to drive. It has some hail damage so we got it pretty cheap! Now, we have three cars! Who said raising kids ain't expensive!!!!?

Hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I'll update the blog with more pictures after the New Year. There will be pictures of Christmas, the New Year and Monk's 11th birthday celebration. Don't forget to check out the pictures at the bottom of the blog.

Hoping Christ is at the center of your Christmas!

Clay pigeons and Goof balls!

Since the last blog entry, we've begun the holiday season. We enjoyed a Thanksgiving meal out at my Mom and Dad's; it was bittersweet since it will probably be the last one we'll have at the house in which I and my siblings grew up. They have their house on the market and are hoping to downsize within the next year. So, it was a good memory making moment for us. We had the traditional turkey dinner (my favorite part is the crispy skin - help explains my thick girth!) and thoroughly enjoyed everybody's company in the DeVries family. The cousins really love getting together; never a dull moment with our crew. Anyway, I brought my camera, but the battery was dead. Sheesh!

The Monday night before Thanksgiving, Noel and I were given box seats to a Denver Broncos Monday Night Football game versus the Tennessee Titans. The Broncos won; it was Noel's first Bronco game ever. It was great! But, I forgot to bring my camera to capture the moment! Idiot!

I did remember to bring my camera to the 2nd annual Northern Ridge Baptist Church skeet shoot, so there's some pictures of guys taking their best shots at flying clay pigeons. That was a lot of fun even though it was in the mid 20s for a temperature.

The other pictures at the bottom of the page are some goofy candids of Ivy and Dennae trying to be creative and funny! I'll let you be the judge of that!

Hope you all are having a Happy Holiday season and trust you will have a very Merry Christmas! I'm sure I'll update this blog once more before Christmas.

For Christ's sake,

MJD,Sr.