Christmas 2009

Wow Christmas 2009 has come and gone and I can not believe it!! It seems like we get ready for months and months and months and we plan and we make list and we shop and we party and we attend and host once a year events and we look forward to it all year long and then its over.. But I have to be honest and tell you Christmas is celebrated everyday at The Rays... Sure Christmas is fun and the season is busy with shopping and partying but the real reason for Christmas is the birth of our sweet savior Jesus Christ and without HIM we would not have any celebration at all.. Without HIM we would not have our families, we would not have our friends and we sure would not have anything else at all~~ We have a family tradition that we go to my parents in Memphis and we celebrate Christmas Eve with them with a fun dinner and exchange gifts with them and my brother and his family and we just have a good time being together and then of course Christmas morning we celebrate with the boys and then off we go to celebrate with Chuck's family.. We are so Thankful that God has blessed us with such special families..We hope that each one of you had a Merry Blessed Christmas and we pray that you will celebrate the true meaning of Christmas everyday too!!Luke 2:10,11

Bunco Progressive Dinner

I have been truly blessed! I was asked to play in our neighborhood bunco group right after I moved here and I just love it.. I have made some wonderful friends in this group and we all just have a great time when we are all together..You know how it is when you get a bunch of females together your are always gonna have at least one that others have issues with.. But, not in this group (unless I am the one)lol!! We all just love each other and have so much fun when we are together.. We have our Christmas Progressive Dinner where we bring our husbands and thats alot of fun too..When we play bunco in November we plan the dinner and we also draw names to see who we will buy " Secret Santa" gifts for and then at the dinner we give our final gift and let the secret out and who we are.. This year I had the best Santa.. she brought me some of the cutest gifts... She brought me a monogrammed stocking filled with wine and chocolate and then she brought me beautiful ornaments for my tree and then she brought me the cutest bucket filled with homemade Hot Choc, homemade marshmellows and candy stir sticks and then for my final gift she gave me the most beautiful blinged out Christmas tree with gold, red and green, gorgeous!! I loved my Secret Santa and I love her.. Kristen Jones... she has to be one of the sweetest people I have ever met! she is the one that invited me to play bunco.. she was actually the very first neighbor I met before we even moved in and she has gone out of her way to be a friend to me.. I am so Thankful for her and so blessed to call her my friend! The dinner was a ton of fun and very very yummy.. We started the evening off having appetizers and cocktails it was very yummy and everyone said they wanted all the recipes for the cocktails that our personal bartender Tonya was making and then we moved on to the main meal which was at Barbara's and she went all out with the tables decorated for Christmas and Patty went all out with her delicious beef stroganoff it was amazing and then we moved on to Donna's for dessert and gifts and that was a fun time too.. It is so much fun to be with all of these sweet couples, we need to do it more often than just once a year, the meal that is!! not the gifts but I could go for that too!! I hope everyone had as much fun as we did. Thank you all for hosting and Thank you all for bringing and providing the food and drinks.. We wish yall a Very Merry Christmas and we hope that 2010 is filled with tons of blessings for you and your family!!

Christmas Cookie and Ornament Exchange

Well, I have been to 2 Christmas cookie and ornament exchanges this season.. Well I have been to one and hosted one.. All I can say is FUN FUN and YUM YUM!!!If you have never been to one you have to!! It is such a fun time of fellowship and good times! I love seeing all the yummy cookies and of course tasting them.. The first exchange was a neighborhood exchange and it was just a good time hanging with friends and meeting new neighbors and of course getting new recipes for cookies.. And the ornament exchange is really neat to because you see all kinds, that may be your taste or not but it is always fun to hang them on your tree year after year and remember where you got it and who it came from.. That game is alot of fun because depending on what number you draw you choose a pkg or steal one from another and that gets really interesting when that gets going...Lots of laughs:)The second one that I hosted was for the ladies and girls of our church, that was alot of fun too.. The funny thing is nobody wanted to steal, I guess that's the honest christian thing to do but I think they realized it was just a game so some of them started it and the game began!! We also went around the room and shared Christmas memories as a child and there were some really good ones..I love hearing about other peoples traditions and seeing how similar they are to ours..Its a such a great time of year to share fun times with friends and I hope they all have a very blessed Christmas but I also hope we all realize that not everyone can afford to go to a exchange so this season I ask you to just reach out to one person and give them a bag of Christmas cookies and a ornament and see how much it blesses them and you too!! Merry Christmas!