December ('10) Family Parites

Here's a random collection of photos from some of our family parties that month.
Queen's Park with Mum, Claire and the kids

Going to the Brisbane Museum and Gallery of Modern Art. All those babies and yet none of us brought any wipes. That backfired.

They had this really great display where they had all these ribbons with wishes printed on them. You were to go through and pick out a wish that fit you and then write a new wish on a piece of paper and put it in the slot. I thought it was really interesting. I took two wishes, the first one said something to the effect of I wish I could go home or something about family but then I didn't want people to feel bad so I also took and more displayed another fine but less intense wish of "I wish I could own all the books in the world." :) Ironically a few weeks before this I had had my parents bring me out suitcases of my books from back home which then were all lost in the floods. And we haven't moved back home, so I'm kind of 0-for-2 on the wishes here, but I do get to come home for a visit this year, and Varian did order me lots of replacement books so at least there's some progress.

Here's Jaren chillin' with his cousins.

Lilly's blessing. They did it at the church but just as a family which I thought was nice and personal. Especially since our ward refuses to use a microphone so no one other than the 5 or 6 men in the circle can even hear the blessing (can you hear my total disapproval of this in my tone?). So it was a lovely blessing. My father-in-law Warren took these photos of Jaren and I twirling in the gym afterwards and I thought they had a fun effect, showing the movement and the happiness on his cute little face! (PS: I'm still a bit bummed that they went with calling her Lily and not Asia since Lily was my top name for Jaren had he turned out to be a girl. I love that name. :( Sigh. But Lily is adorable!)

 

Hiking to the Ipswich Water tower. How I love watching Varian play with our boys. What a great dad he is!

 

Swimming at Oma and Opa's

 Dinner parties and making dessert.

 

Games nights. Here we're playing scum (typically we're in to all the crazy German Strategy games, but the Aston have their crazy scum rules that they like to play). The 2nd picture isn't all that great but I love the expressions on Cameron's and Lani's face as I do some amazing move. :)

And we took a picture of Brandon, who had the most amazing hand, and then Chad who's highest card was like a 9 or something terrible.

 

Church and my nephew Rylan's birthday-beach party. Look at that fun cake Chad made him, Rylan and Zahn are Lego-addicts and I thought that was a cute idea! More December postings to come. :)