Christmas Decorating Boy Style!

This year, the boys added their special touch to our Christmas decorations! They did a great job, worked hard and were very creative!!

Christmas Lights!

One of the Keller Family's favorite Christmastime activities is looking at amazing Christmas light displays. This year, we took our friends, the Dickinsons, to some of our favorites! First, we visited Cherry Lane. We've gone to this amazing street every year since Daniel was a newborn and we overdressed him by bundling him up in a little snowsuit! After Cherry Lane, we drove over to the largest Christmas village ever assembled! Truly, it's a sight to see. This sweet couple collects and then displays in their garage thousands of village pieces. We love seeing these labors of love and are thankful for those who put so much time and energy into creating holiday magic and fond memories for our family!

Dinner at Uncle Flake's House

On Tuesday December 21, mom and the boys had lunch with Uncle Flake at his retirement community. Grandma Bettie, Grandpa Ron, Grandma Freda and Matt were all able to join us. We had a wonderful time. The food in the private dining room was fantastic and the company and good conversation were even better. We are blessed to have such a wonderful family and to be able to spend quality time together!

Feed My Starving Children

On Friday, December 17, we were invited by the Earl family to do food packing at the Feed My Starving Children Warehouse. Feed My Starving Children is a Christian Charity that gets nutritious meals to starving children all over the world. They work with churches to host packing events, relief agencies to deliver the meals and the community to raise funds to provide the meals. First, we watched a video about hunger throughout the world. Hunger is a huge problem, but we were so encouraged to learn how we can help! While at the warehouse, our team packed "Manna Packs." Manna packs are very nutritious meals that save lives. We packed each bag first with dehydrated chicken powder, then dehydrated veggies, finally soy nuggets and then rice. When added to boiling water, each bag of food provides six meals. At the end, we were able to taste some prepared "manna" and it was delicious! During the evening, our team bagged, sealed and packed 8 boxes of thirty six bags of food. That's 1,728 meals! Wow. Our family was so blessed by this experience. We came to love the ministry of Save My Starving Children and want to continue to do whatever we can do to help starving children! The boys can't wait to pack food again, and we will do it really soon!!

Our Gingerbread House!

It's our tradition to do a Gingerbread House every Christmas. This year, the boys really took charge. They worked together and loaded the house with tons of candy! Great job, boys!!

Disneyland Trip Day 4: Sea World

We discovered that Wednesday, December 8 was homeschool day at Sea World. And, since we were already planning to be in Southern California at this time, and since all four families traveling together are homeschoolers, we had to make this work! So, early in the morning we left our hotel in Anaheim and drove straight to Sea World. We made it there by 9:30, checked in at the Education Entrance and had about five hours of fun with Shamu and all his friends! The park was a virtual ghost town, and we were able to visit all of the major exhibits before heading back to the Valley in the middle of the afternoon. Daniel loved the killer whale exhibit, Benji thought the seals were the best and Ethan and Noah were big fans of the sharks! Hooray for Sea World and hooray for huge discounts for homeschool families!!!

Disneyland Trip Day 3: Disneyland!

Yeah! Tuesday, December 7 was our day to visit the original and best park: Disneyland! Our friends, the Glaziers met us this morning for breakfast at the hotel and joined us for a day full of fun at Disneyland. We headed straight for Tomorrow Land, where the kids rode Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters and Space Mountain, then the Finding Nemo Submarines and Autopia. It was non-stop riding from then on out. We opened the park at 9am and closed it down on the Matterhorn at 9pm. And, in between, we rode the Go-Coaster, It's a Small World, Thunder Mountain Railroad, Indiana Jones, The Haunted Mansion, Splash Mountain, Winnie the Pooh's Adventure, Pirates of the Caribbean, Jungle Cruise and more, and many of these rides we rode many times Daniel and Benjamin loved Space Mountain and Thunder Mountain the best. Ethan loves the Haunted Mansion and Noah is a huge Pirates of the Caribbean fan! We were blessed with fantastic weather, light crowds and happy kids! What a magical day we had at Disneyland!