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Last night was the Holick Family Christmas.  Dinner was held at Pete and Cindy’s Restaurant, Anchors Landing in Startzville, TX.  We then trekked over to Pete and Cindy’s home to have dessert and perform the infamous Holick Gift Exchange.  I say infamous because for some reason, my family has the hardest time getting the gift exchange started.  It’s different every year; one year we couldn’t decided on how many times a gift could be stolen and for a couple of years we had boy and girl gifts which really kind of limits the pool.  I think the big thing is getting everyone to stop talking or shouting long enough to get started.  This year we had missing gifts..  26 people, 23 gifts.  Lesson for next year, designate a gift table.  Oh, we also had a missing number, but that one worked itself out.  It was a good time this year, even the family photo worked out well.  I’ll need to get a copy from Uncle Steve.

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We celebrated Sarah Lynn’s 5th birthday this past weekend.  The last couple of years, Sarah has wanted to go to The Bounce but it closed up shop recently.  Liz and I thought about having it at the house, but our schedule of events has been rather full this month.  Liz thought about the movie theater and the timing actually worked out that we all got to see “The Princess and the Frog”.  What a great movie.  A couple sequences were a bit scary and some were just hilarious.  I think the kids loved it.  They definitely didn’t get bored with it.  The party went well although, there was an abundance of energy as they all just sat for an hour and a half.  Lots of running and hide and seek in the party room.  At least it was a big party room.  I think the hit of party was the whipped cream, however.

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This morning we took the children to “Breakfast with Santa” hosted by the St. Joseph Eagle’s Nest at the Parish Activity Center.  There were lots of really neat activities such as making a Christmas ornament, decorating Christmas cookies, decorating gingerbread houses.  Santa and Mrs. Clause even arrived for pictures.  Sarah wrote two letters to Santa, she wants a laptop.  I don’t know where she got that idea.  As a special treat, the kids that are learning dance from Ms. Cheryl got up and performed in front of everyone.

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What a busy weekend, well, more than that really.  Celeste had her Christmas ice skating show this weekend, “Once Upon a Christmas Dream” at the Arctic Wolf Ice Center.  The weekend started Thursday evening with the dress rehearsal and concluded with the final performance Saturday evening.  Three shows in total plus the dress rehearsal.  Throw in a birthday party for Sarah to attend and we didn’t spend too much time at home.

The show was wonderful.  Beautiful costumes, wonderful choreography, and plenty of hot chocolate.  Of course, I did take pictures.  Actually, I took over 1300 pictures the dress rehearsal and final performance.  I think that’s a record for me.  I filled five flash cards in total, about 14 GB of data.  I’ve spent the day sorting through them and culling out the shots that were out of focus (or off focus, some of the skaters can really move on the ice) or just of the backs of the skaters.  That still left almost 130 images.  I’ll probably cull those down to just a few really good captures.  Not too bad really.

This first set was taken at the dress rehearsal on Thursday evening.

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This second set was taken during the evening performance on Saturday.

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Note, a few of the images may appear skewed in the viewer, right-click on the image and choose “open in new window” to see the image correctly.