Post-Christmas Catchup

I have really been neglecting my blog! I waited too long to start on Christmas preparations and I paid for it in the month of December. Oh yeah, and I've been reading a lot of good books.

Christmas was good! Here's a little recap:

We had Christmas Eve at my parents' house. My family ate at our house and then went over to my parents' to watch the children put on the always entertaining and traditional Nativity play (reverence is not our strong suit at this event.) My sister-in-law brought over her mother's great costumes--complete with donkey ears! My youngest has been talking about it for weeks so fortunately she got to be Mary. And the teenagers hammed it up.

Then we sang raucous carols like we always do and headed home except for the older kids who stayed to play the water game for an hour or two. What's the water game, you ask? It's basically playing Uno, but every time you lose you have to drink a full glass of water. The first person who has to go to the bathroom is out, and so on. This is one of those games where the winner is really the loser. I think my brother won once and had to get up to use the bathroom 7 times that night.

My favorite part of Christmas happened shortly after we got up on Christmas morning. We got to Skype with our missionaries! We only get to talk to them twice a year--Mother's Day and Christmas--so this was a special treat. It was a 4-way Skype (which you can do if you get Skype premium.) I was a little nervous for it to work but it was just fine. First we talked to our 3rd son in Ukraine, then our 2nd son called in from Latvia. Our first son and his wife live nearby but didn't wake up in time so they made it the 4-way Skype. Our two missionaries are doing well and it was great to talk to them and ask all the questions I wanted to.

Afterwards we had a nice brunch before we opened the presents. And then before we left the table, I had the kids do something that I want to make a tradition. We all shared our favorite scripture about Christ. We don't much that's really that spiritual on Christmas, but we need to! The kids cooperated and didn't seem to mind.

We spent the rest of the day enjoying each other's company.

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