Christmas 2009

Trust me to have 1000 things to do just before Christmas . . . . and it was a race to the end but I squeaked by.

One of the fun things we did was decorate a tree for my brother's family. They were coming to spend Christmas at my mother's house and "bringing a little tree." Being the Christmas tree nut that I am, how could I tolerate a "little tree"? So on Dec. 23rd, we found this beautiful noble fir tree for just $10, and decorated it with some of my "left over" decorations. B strung some lights outside on the bushes, too. We left the lights on inside and outside for my brother's family to discover as they pulled in late that night. It was a fun surprise.

Christmas Eve, we went to B's parents' house for a pizza dinner. Here are some of the family who attended.

My brother-in-law NK and my father-in-law.

Our nephew WK and T.

My sister-in-law GK, L, J, my mother-in-law and KM.

The back of D's head (don't know his last name), Bryan's sister, our great-niece, our niece's husband and our niece.

By the time we arrived back home, T went directly to bed. We normally have certain Christmas Eve activities but we got carried away wrapping packages (I put the other kids to work wrapping--they'll need counseling later). They helped me until I sent them to bed at 11:30 p.m. and I stayed up until about 3 (YAWN) finishing up.

Here are the three kiddos on Christmas morning. Before anyone could open presents, we made everyone sit down and we did a shortened version of our traditional Christmas Eve activities--listened to the Christmas story from the scriptures and read our nativity book (and the boys still argued over who pulled the tabs on the 3-D book). :-)

Here is the Christmas morning gift unwrapping melee. Ha ha!

Here is our dog unwrapping her squeeky toy. Interestingly enough, she only unwrapped her own gifts--this toy and two bags of dog snacks. She left all the other presents alone. What a smart pooch.

After everything was unwrapped, we said, "Sometimes Santa goes down a different chimney. Where might that be?"

They finally figured out that it might be downstairs. Here are the boys unwrapping the XBox360 they'd just about decided Santa wasn't bringing this year.

Ho Ho Ho. Merry Christmas!

I made breakfast for everyone.

I spent the rest of the day getting ready for Christmas dinner with B's parents. B had given me a few more plates to go with my Lenox Christmas set and I wanted to use them. I decided that I should use my nice flatware, too. My mother and I bought it for me back in 1983 when I was earning $4.00 per hour. I've never used that flatware before--I had to polish it before we could use it! I also used some glasses I've never used before. What am I saving all of it for if not for "now"?

At the last minute, we found out we were having five more people come. So we hurriedly set up a second table (in the kitchen) for my two boys and B's great-nephew. The rest of us sat at this table.

Here are my in-laws and B's two great-nieces. We put L in charge of finding things for the girls to do. H (right) is a year older than L and the little one, J, is 3. After trying to keep up with J for several hours, L decided she was glad she didn't have a little sister who would need to share a bedroom and would get into L's "stuff." :-)

We had a nice Christmas. Hope you did, too.