Our annual Banks family Christmas party was pretty special this year.  My mom had helped me scan over 600 of Alan and Sharon’s old picture slides at the Family History Center.  Then, I pulled my favorite ones and made them into a photo book. All the members of the family included notes of love and those were included in the book.  Rusty put together a slide show for us to all watch together.  Every year Sharon has a theme for the evening and this year was “Christmas Memories.”  She asked us all to think of one of our favorite Christmas memories to share with each other.  She started and told the story of the first Christmas in the Highland house and how they’d gone to the forest to cut down their own Christmas Tree.  I was grinning ear to ear.  Out of all the Christmases, she chose that one.  AND I HAD PICTURES OF IT in our book!   It could not have worked out any better if we’d planned it that way.  Sharon was so surprised and we all had so much fun looking at little Brett, Cory, and Rusty, seeing all Sharon’s many hairstyles, and seeing numerous hunting and fishing pictures of Alan.

The kids also loved seeing pictures of Fluffy and Snoopy when they were puppies. And how adorable is Rusty’s sailor suit?  After sharing our Christmas Memories and seeing photos, it was present time!  And who should come to deliver presents, but Santa himself!  Halle got an Instax polaroid camera, Josh got an xBox gift certificate, and Blake got a microscope that he loooooves.Love all these cute kiddos!And Poto got to meet his new cousin, Dash.  Dash warmed up, but at first he just hid between Alan’s legs and every once in a while he’d let out a little bark at Poto.