Christmas Break, Part 1

The last few weeks have been action-packed!  Hence, part 1 to be followed by part 2.

My oldest son and his wife and daughter came to town about a week before Christmas, flying in from Texas.  They had some friends to visit and a wedding to attend. We had some family activities too:  snowman building, bowling, visiting the Norman Rockwell exhibit at the local art museum, and a little sledding.

First we celebrated Garrett's birthday--he's 21!

Then we celebrated Jan's birthday after he went to the new Star Wars movie with Sallie and David and Stephanie.

This is one of my all-time favorite pictures, seeing my children all work/play together, having a great time, from the oldest, age 25, to the youngest, age 8.  We're just missing Lincoln from this picture.  My granddaughter is being held by her dad. The snowman measured 11 feet!  He fell over during the night thanks to the temperatures being a little above freezing, but that didn't matter.

The three oldest boys enjoyed some bonding over computer games.

For FHE, we made gingerbread houses out of graham crackers.

Later in the week, I took my youngest two girls sledding with my granddaughter.  It was cold but there was plenty of snow and the hill wasn't too steep.  I'm not sure Katie saw the appeal in sledding but we introduced her to the sport at least.  Mindy is the biggest fan of sledding and is sad when there's no snow.

For Christmas Eve, I repeated the "Middle Eastern" dinner from last year:  flat bread, salmon, grapes, dates (literally the ones from last year which were a little old...), a salad, and grape juice.  For dessert, we had pumpkin pie squares, our nod to a traditional Western dessert.

Camille always wants to be Mary; Everett is the wicked King Herod.

Katie and Susanna enjoyed being shepherds

We had a good Christmas.  We loved talking to Lincoln on his mission in Canada on Christmas morning.  He seemed in good spirits and I love watching the person he is becoming.

 It was a good week.  I won't say it was stress or conflict-free.  It was the pre-Christmas rush and we had 12 people in our house for much of the week. I'm still figuring out what's appropriate to say or not say with my adult children (I may never completely figure it out).  But there were some really sweet moments too and I enjoyed the time we got to spend together.