Ahh, Christmas! We love it. It's our favorite holiday of the year. We love celebrating the wondrous birth of our Savior. We are so grateful for Him. We are grateful for the courage of Mary and Joseph to face the many challenges of their situation.
The 23rd was our "Christmas Eve". I love Christmas on Sunday! We decided to do our fun part on Saturday because we like to watch moives and such....movies and such that we don't do on Sunday. Plus Sunday after church we headed to my parent's house.
For our Chrismtas Eve, the day was pretty normal. Lee worked. Shanna went to a friend's house. We were going to have people over that night but one family had been quite ill (though feeling better) and another was exposed to COVID (though testing negative). With my family coming to town I didn't want to risk getting sick! We canceled on them, sadly. The missionaries still came over which was nice.
On the way to Waynesboro to drop off Shanna we drove around a fallen tree on highway 340. Crazy!
The pictures are out of order, but glad we saw it instead of running right into it.
Lee wore the "ugly" sweater to work that I bought. I got it at Kohl's for around $8. Not too bad!
That night we had the birthday gift and cake part for me. It was very fun. Haley always pampers me on my birthday!
Chocolate from Haley too!!!
For a Christmas Party my friends did, they had this chocolate tuxedo cake from Costco. It's so good! I saw some at Costco, a bit discounted, so I bought one for my birthday cake. YUM.
Elden with the floating bunny ears.
Lots of candle when you turn 43!
Some fun before bed! It was our Christmas Eve.
Time to hang up the sheet.
The kids are tucked in for the night! There are two bedrooms and a bathroom, so they have what they need for the evening. Elden read T'was the Night Before Christmas for us. I was going to read it but he wanted to. We don't do Santa at our house. Ever since our kids were little we've always told them that Santa wasn't real, and that Dad was their Santa. With that, I do love the idea of Santa and him giving gifts, which stems from the story of St. Nicholas which is awesome.
Time for the goodie set up and putting out gifts and stockings!
The kids got up about 7am this year. They of course had to wait for me like every year.
I found these Christmas crackers at Hobby Lobby, which I thought would be fun to do.
Okay, picture time!
Lee brings them in one by one to see their stockings. Usually they have a couple gifts by their stocking. We did a few more gifts this year than normal. We're all over the place with that. One year we did no gifts. One year we did one. Most we have given several. It's so nice not getting a bunch of stuff at Christmas though.
Elden twisted up haha.
The Frankes were so sweet and gave us some fun gifts. One was this bag of bursting gummy worms. Too funny!
The kids each gifted one another some really great things. Like Elden giving Shanna these sandals.
Gummies from Haley to Lee!
Cal gifted this to Shanna.
Elden gave this to Haley.
Shoes from Cal.
LED lights from Shanna.
I finally bought Cal a few Cal State items. Very fun!
Haley gave this to Elden. We've all been loving it.
Tracks from Haley!
Cal gifted these to Shanna.
Cal bought 3 Alexas for the house haha.
Our annual pj photo! I sent pjs to Clark as well. I'm hoping we can use the same pjs next year!
Elder Robertson from Japan! Since we celebrated on the 24th, it was the 25th in Japan which allowed Elder Robertson to call us on his Christmas.
It was fun that he got to open his presents with us.
Elder Robertson sent this box with TONS of Japanese goodies and a personal letter to each person. So fun!
When Elder Robertson was serving in Arizona Elden sent him some grass from Virginia. He wanted some Arizona grass, but Elden never recieved any. Well, Elder Robertson finally sent him some Japanese grass. It is now safely lamenated, haha.
The best other part of the day...hanging out!
This is a partial pictures of the TONS of goodies Elder Robertson and his companion received at Christmas from the ward in Japan. I love the half cabbage. A common thing in Japan is to have Kentucky Fried Chicken at Christmas. Haha. I love it.
This photo is out of context. But right before Christmas it was REALLY cold. For here anyway....single digits. Even the window washing fluid was frozen!
Christmas morning we went to church. Shanna and Cal played a nice duet arrangement of Away in the Manger. I told Cal that was his last piano recital. Christmas day photo!
We then headed up to PA! It was my Dad's birthday the 24th. We went up a day late. It was fun spending Christmas evening with Darrell & Stacie and family and the Bunkers and my parents. I brought some goodies to share. I was hoping to get there a little earlier as we had tons of food, but we didn't. The Chevy was acting weird so we went home and drove the truck up. We changed and then switched everything over. Once we got to mom's everyone had already eaten earlier. Ugh.
Seaweed from Japan.
The food setup!
I made a photo book for my mom of our trip to Europe last summer.
A shirt from Daniel and Amy to my Dad.
One last call with Elder Robertson! I hope you all had a terrific Christmas! We sure did. We recieved a wonderful gift that day when Christ was born. And an even greater gift when he died for our sins and hurts, and was then resurrected so we could all be resurrected.
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