Christmas Reconnecting in MN

Nate's Group

Jenna's Group

Christmas!

Nate

Ice Age

Christmas with the Kirkwoods

Team Shirts!

Annual Men's Dinner

Appetizers

Serving the Ladies

Serving the Ladies

The Table

Kalamazoo 1/1 Run

In Action

Men Things

Nate's First Round

Voted Off the Face

Each kid invited some of their friends to a community pool to reconnect during our short visit home. Leah's group.

An electric guitar for Jenna... The lessons will have to wait until the end of our adventure.

Each kid did a great job getting a gift for each other. Leah's to Nate was a homemade knitting project.

A favorite DVD becomes part of the collection

After a too short Chirpich Christmas celebration in Wells, we drove to Michigan for the Kirkwood Christmas. Squish pillows were the special Grandkid's gift this year.

Grandma Kirkwood worked with another woman to design special "Field Trip USA" sweatshirts for our family, a way cool idea!

Each Christmas the men treat the ladies to a home-cooked gourmet meal. This year the each item on the menu represented different states our family visited on the western loop.

The meal included Southwestern tortilla soup, sparkling Washington grape juice, Southern Cal greens/orange/almond salad, Texas beef roast, Pacific salmon, Idaho twice-baked potatoes, California Valley brocolli, and fresh lemonade from the lemons we picked in Arizona! Dessert was Rocky Mountain Peaks- mountains of Rocky Road ice cream with marshmallow snow on top.

Nate and I joined Uncle John and Cousin Laura for a New Years fun run.

At the halfway point...

As Nate is so outnumbered as the only Kirkwood grandson, Uncle John treated Nate and I to a "men's" afternoon of target shooting at the range.

Not bad!

The beard was voted down over Christmas. (Brenda's voted was weighted the heaviest...)