Eight Great Memories of 2008

What a year of blessings! Here are eight of our favorite family memories from 2008.

#1 - Ava's birth - July 23, 2008

#2 - The baptisms of Claire, Tommy, Luke and Ava - November 22, 2008

#3 - Christmas Day

#4 - Trick-or-treating - October 31, 2008

#5 - Fishing memories

#6 - Sharing Thanksgiving with the whole Pfaffenbach clan

#7 - Claire and Tommy's first professional baseball game

#8 - Watching Claire and Tommy play soccer

Christmas in NY

Christmas in NY...we enjoyed...lots of laughs, tons of great food, many games of UNO, and catching up with our family!

Claire and Grandma Pat

Grandpa Bern loves his chocolate covered cherries!

Uncle with Tommy and Luke

Claire and Ava

Daddy, Mommy and Tommy

Grandpa Bern with Ava and Luke

An UNO match between Uncle and Claire

Christmas

Christmas 2008 was our best Christmas yet!

We began Christmas morning by sleeping in (until 7:30!), which was quickly followed by opening presents. Our favorite gifts were....coffee grinder (Matt), new cell phone (Andrea), easel with dry erase board and chalk board (Claire), soccer goal (Tommy) and lincoln logs (Luke). (Ava slept until 10 am and opened her presents in the afternoon.) Presents were followed by breakfast - which included the traditional eating of the Jesus birthday cake. We attended a beautiful Christmas Day Mass and spent the rest of the day having fun - sledding on our new sleds and playing with our new toys! We were thankful for a white Christmas - over a foot of snow was on the ground - with sunny, (relatively) warm weather!

Merry Christmas!

Tommy's Christmas Breakfast and Pageant

We love our preschool! We count ourselves blessed to be able to send our kids to such an outstanding preschool...that just happens to host a Christmas breakfast each year. This was our fourth year participating - that's hard to believe! Some highlights of the morning were a pancake breakfast, gingerbread house-making and a Christmas pageant. It was fun to watch Tommy as he played a wise man this year.

We had some "structural" issues with this house but it sure looked and tasted yummy!

Waiting in the wings

The three wisemen - Theo, Tommy and Zach

Merry Christmas to all!

A Pfaffenbach Thanksgiving

Here are some pictures from our very fun Thanksgiving holiday 2008! All seventeen Pfaffenbachs (7 adults, 10 kids) spent the holiday together eating, playing, eating, visiting, eating and watching movies. Did I mention that we ate a lot of yummy food, too??? Thanks to Andy, Renelle and JoAnne for hosting the entire gang. We can't wait to do it all again next year!!

Andrea and Renelle

Emily and Allison play a game of Scrabble

There was some tough competition!


Lindsey and Ava

The boys - Tommy, Noah and Luke

Aunt Shelly, Ava and Abby

Aunt Shelly and Luke

Luke had lots of fun playing with Noah's combine

Noah, Allison, Emily and Tommy

Abby and Ava

Allison(12), Emily(11), Andrea(14),

Noah(6), Lindsey(8), Abby(8), Ava(4 months), Claire(6), Tommy(4) and Luke(2)

Ava and Aunt Shelly

Allison and Ava

Uncle Matt and Abby

Allison and Luke

Renelle and Andy

Christmas Card Photo Shoot

This morning we took some pictures of the kids for our annual Pfaffenbach Christmas card. Here are the pictures that didn't make the card, but were too cute to go to waste. Enjoy!

Tommy and Luke

Claire and Ava

The whole gang

Our Christmas Baby