Well, the title of this post sums it all up.
Andrew made it home safely from Provo, so we are all here except for Eric. Plus various other cousins have been around. It's been fabulous.
My camera broke on Sunday the 23rd. My dad said he had a similar problem and that it might be that I needed to replace my battery (which was acting funny). $13 later I can say it wasn't the battery. It's a sad thing to not have a camera at Christmas time. Ryan took a few photos on his cell phone and Alex took some on his camera--conclusion is that Alex needs a camera that takes pictures you can actually see.
The one picture I really wanted was the "pickle" picture. Years ago Eric made a paper maché pickle that gets hidden on the tree every Christmas. The first child to find the pickle gets to be the first to play Santa (they wear a Santa's hat) and take a gift from under the tree and give it to the first recipient, who puts on the hat and opens the gift. Then he/she grabs another gift from under the tree and gives it to the next recipient.
We love this tradition, only this time we didn't find the paper maché pickle to hide...so unbeknownst to the kids, I took a real mini-gherkin and put it on a hook and hung it up. Hannah found it...and about freaked out upon discovering she was squishing a real pickle in her fingers. It was funny.
But, even without good pictures, Christmas was great anyway. It was just the 6 of us since it was my sister's turn to have my parents for the holidays. We did have Glen's parents here for a little bit when Eric called for his allotted Christmas call. Eric is enjoying his mission and his new assignment is Data Quality. He works on the 6th floor of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in a restricted area. He didn't have any details yet since he had just received the assignment and hadn't really started working there yet due to the holidays. We hope to hear more on Saturday when we get his email.
We spent the next week (and since then) playing games. Lots and lots of games. Of which I lost 99% of them, but that's OK.
We got an expander pack for our Dominion game (Dark Ages), a quick and funny card game called "We Didn't Playtest This At All," and my favorite "7 Wonders" and its expansion pack "7 Cities."
For New Year's Eve, we went to the church dance, but we spent the time playing games and giving a mini-lesson and attending the other mini-lessons. Nothing too exciting, but we were together, and I'm not into excitement anyway.
Today and tomorrow, Hannah is having a Harry Potter movie marathon. The first 4 movies are on today's list and we'll finish up with the other 4 tomorrow. She dipped pretzel rods in white chocolate and different sprinkles as magic wands. We cut into the necks of gummy bears so they can represent the character Nearly Headless Nick. Hannah made butterbeer (cream soda and butterscotch with rum flavoring--I think I'd rather just have the cream soda, though). We have chocolate brownies so we are ready for dementor attacks. Best of all--we used the cake pop machine that my parents gave us for Christmas to make doughnut hole Golden Snitches. During this enterprise Glen learned the difference between apple cider (which the recipe called for) and apple cider vinegar (which is what Glen put in the batter). It was quite funny.
However, after the marathon started, we discovered that Steve the Cat is missing...we think he might have gotten out yesterday when we were taking the Christmas decorations outside. He was our stand-in for the orange tabby Crookshanks. Oh well. Just hope he's safe and turns up.
So, we are having a great time and it's been a wonderful vacation. We have Ryan until the 5th and Andrew until the 6th when they will head back to school for the start of a new semester. We will miss them, but then I'll have a better chance of winning the games...maybe...as long as Hannah isn't playing...or Alex.
UPDATE: We found the missing cat...under a drawer in a cabinet in the kitchen! We heard a meowing and then it took us 5-10 minutes to figure out where it was coming from. Steve is safe and sound.
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