Christmas Day

This is the first Christmas since we moved into the house when we actually had a gaggle of kids in the house! What fun we had! We started with the normal “kids singing carols on the stairs” to alert the parents and grandparents that they were ready to party!

Everyone ended up eating and playing with the stuff in their stockings on the stair landing before they charged into the “Christmas Room”.

And then it was CHARGE!

 

Here’s the letter the kids left for Santa and his reply:

 

I was so excited about finding this bib for our Swiss baby. And so was her mom.

 

Baby:  Not so much!

Wow, did we have fun with this baby! The Loosli’s had a ball with her. Her parents and Grandparents like her quite a lot too!

 

There were also gifts from the kids to the grandparents. Oliver made this darling book for us which included a workbook that we had to fill in and report back on! Silas did one too. Adorable!

Then there were the big guys gifts. Quite a lot of fun!

 

There were lots of happy onlookers: The Gooblers: (inside story…more than you want to know) and The Moose came back for a quick visit:

But nobody was happier about watching the fun than Grandfather!

 

The morning festivities were followed by the traditional eggs benedict. No one that I know of thought to take pictures because everyone was working on the assembly line, but we had fun cranking all that out.

That afternoon and evening we took turns going to our favorite family play/movie in the world Les Meserables. Four adults went while the other four stayed with the kids and then we traded, not only times but also analysis. We all loved it!

In between we had a simple Christmas dinner complete with Christmas crackers and crowns. Blurry but….better than nothing!

It was a VERY Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve 2012

Traditions abound on Christmas Eve! It began with a beautiful snow storm and another visit from the moose! We can only hope that is a tradition that lasts!

Eliza sat by the windows and wrote in her journal about the magical moment as the snow fell, Charity sang a beautiful Christmas song at the piano, Isaac organized the nativity scene for the last time and the cute cousins bonded!

All preparations were made for what we have always call “The Jerusalem Supper”.  At about 6 p.m. we transform into the family and friends of Mary as they send she and Joseph off to Bethlehem for the long journey on the donkey.Elizabeth and Zacharias are there as well as Mary’s parents. Joseph and Mary sit by each other at the table and guests are invited to ask questions, worry for them and wish them well on their journey.

We are costumed and our food is like (somewhat) what they would have eaten in the time of Jesus….fish, unleavened bread, grapes, dates, figs, cheese, fish and “wine”.  Our Joseph this year (Isaac) was particularly talkative and gave us details about his trade as a carpenter. Mary (Eliza) was quiet and courageous about her epic journey. No electric lights allowed (well except for the Christmas tree. I’m sure they would have had one of those in Nazareth).

 

The thoughtful dinner was followed by the traditional nativity scene. Jared is the donkey here but he looks more like a BIG sheep!

Mary and Joseph particularly adored the baby!

With thenativity narration by Ashton and a reading from Luke 2 by Grandfather we felt the true meaning of Christmas on the Eve of our Savior’s birth. 

After that the lights went on, everyone opened new Christmas pajamas and we sent very excited children off to try to sleep!  Christmas morning coming next.

Christmas Number 1

Because Noah and Kristi had to leave on the December 23rd to join Kristi’s family in Texas,we had two Christmas mornings at our house this year. As is the tradition at our house, the children gather on the stairs, not earlier than 7:30 and start singing Christmas Carols to signal to the adults that it’s time for the merriment to begin! We loved actually being able to watch a few of our grandchildren open their gifts from us. Since they are scattered from both coasts to Hawaii this year, we loved actually having a few of them in our home!

 

Everybody enjoyed everybody else’s gifts:

Our friends the moose showed up outside of our window just as the kids were opening their presents:

 

Then we cloistered the parents so they could open their present which was the same present that we the other adults were getting. Grandfather absolutely the others couldn’t see it until the next Christmas morning.

 

After the revelry we had a fun breakfast together. The Jackson Soufflé was perfect!

And then it was on to building Gingerbread Houses from the new super-star store….Trader Joe’s. After searching them out everywhere we go on the East and West coast  for such a long time for this favorite store finally arrived in Salt Lake!  It was the biggest opening day in Trader Joes’ history! Anyway, on to the Gingerbread Houses.

 

Interestingly, this day also happened to be Kristi’s birthday so we had fun celebrating ALL day with her! That is when we weren’t cleaning out the attic in our old house which we had sold several months earlier.  The buyers are a darling family who allowed us to wait until the kids came home for Christmas to get “their stuff” out of the attic. It was a much bigger job than we had anticipated. There was stuff up there that everyone had forgotten about for many years! We were so busy sorting it out and trying to figure out what to do with it all that I don’t think anyone took pictures. Maybe it was just as well. It was not a pretty sight!  Squirrels had been having wild parties up there including digging into some of the boxes to store apples from the yard for the winter.

In any case, everyone enjoyed celebrating Kristi’s birthday with her. Charity could only find 16 birthday candles so Charity suggested that each one should represent two birthdays. Kristi said that she loved the 16 candles and divulged that her family had forgotten her 16th birthday in the Christmas mayhem and she didn’t even mention it for a couple of days. I’m sure her delightful family were horrified when she reminded them! So Kristi, not to even mention it!

That night we went to see the Christmas lights on Temple Square along with (literally) about a million other people. I would call it a mistake as we were struggling to keep track of 20 people (9 adults and 11 kids) if it wasn’t for this picture….which we got with all the ones we could find at the moment.

 

 

Christmas Eve coming up!