Christmas!

i love the Christmas season! i love Christmas music, snow, shopping for Christmas gifts, etc. so i thoroughly enjoyed the month of December. this year my church participated in Advent Conspiracy as we tried to refocus what the Christmas season is really all about. we talked about spending less, giving more, worshiping fully, and loving all as what the Christmas season is supposed to be about. for more info on this, check out http://www.adventconspiracy.org/ or http://adventconspiracy.wordpress.com/















as part of our life group Christmas party, some of us made jar gifts to participate in advent conspiracy. here are some of my friends assembling their brownies in a jar!



















my family has a tradition of a Christmas cookie bake. since my brother is getting married this summer and his fiancee has a couple of nieces and nephews, she wanted to start a similar tradition with them! so i went over to help. here i am with maya cutting out our cookies!



















here is andrea (my brother's fiancee) with her newest niece ali who is only a few months old! check out that hair!



















jack decided to go for the efficient route and double fist it with the frosting!



















ben wasn't too interested in the cookie bake, although he did enjoy playing with the flour and eating the cookies!



















the final result of the cookie bake!



















every year, i bug my dad to get a bigger and bigger Christmas tree since our sunroom has a really tall roof. so this year he actually tried to get one that would qualify! pretty sure this tree was like 12 ft tall!















our family pic on Christmas eve. this one was my favorite thanks to my brother Aaron in the middle. ;) doesn't my mom's hair look cute now that its growing back in after the chemo?!



















Daniel looks thrilled by the t-shirt i got him. hehe, i thought it was appropriate!



















andrea will be an official Gehrke by the next Christmas!















this is one of my favorite pictures from our family Christmas this year, but it requires a little explanation. while my dad was on business in Mexico in December, my mom went to visit my grandma and they went antiquing. she found a blue dish that she wanted, so she bought it. she decided it would be funny to wrap it up and put a tag on it that said it was to her from dad. so she had my brother write out the tag to look like my dad's handwriting. the whole time she was opening this gift, my dad was really confused, but figured he had just forgotten about it! it was so funny to see his reaction as she opened it and didn't recognize the gift at all! my mom was crying she was laughing so hard! it was a great time!