New Year's Day Open House

We had our own New Year's Eve party here at our house Monday evening, but I had so much fun that I completely forgot to take pictures. So I made sure to take pictures the next day at Aunt Marilyn and Uncle Gene's Open House. Aunt Jeanie made this Christmas quilt for Aunt Marilyn. Isn't it beautiful?
Uncle Gene brought back this ram's horn from his recent trip to Israel. It makes a loud sound. We were all impressed with how heavy this horn is...and it is only one of two horns that the poor ram has to bear!
Aunt Marilyn goes to a church with a large deaf ministry. This is my cousin, Susan, who has a deaf son. Susan was kept very busy all day with interpreting. Aunt M had invited many deaf friends over for the day. Since my daughter, Anna, is learning to sign, she had a great time watching Susie signing.
This is my cousin, Sylvia, and her new hubby, Jeff. We all enjoyed meeting Jeff and fell in love with his fun-loving and down-to-earth personality. Jeff hails from WV but has moved to MD to be with Sylvia. Even though Sylvia has had juvenile diabetes since she was a child, and was in a terrible car accident years ago, she is one healthy woman! It was so good to see her doing well and being so happily in love.
Jeff made a hit with Allen when he gave him this automatic BB gun that his son had outgrown. Allen has talked about it all day when he wasn't shooting it!

Of course, it wouldn't be a family get together if we didn't do the music thing! Here is Uncle Gene playing his tuba.
And this is Aunt Marilyn playing her Clavinova with Uncle Ron on the violin. Our family took our turn singing. We were rebuked for not bringing any of our instruments ~ no one seemed to listen to our excuse of not having room in our mini-van with seven people and two baskets of food!
The music knocked Mike right out. To tell the truth, our busy holiday season was finally catching up to us and we were all getting drowsy. Actually, I was glad to see Mike get some sleep before our 2-1/2 hour drive home.

I let the children have an additional day off from school while we did many loads of dishwashers, 8 loads of laundry, took down the extra table, took all the large platters down to the cellar pantry, and put our home back in order. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas season. We are sure feeling blessed in our home.

Many blessings ~ Kathie