Treading Water: Christmas post

Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Christmas post

First off, it was my parents' 60th wedding anniversary on the 20th. They were in Vegas at my sister's for their celebration. Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad! Sure do love you both!

Denise and Pat made a photo mat with greetings from all of us!

If I had to pick 3 words to describe the last few days, they would be: everyone, games, and chaos.

Everyone is home this year for Christmas. The last time we were all together was Thanksgiving 2015, so that isn't too bad, but that means we didn't have a chance to take a family photo until a few days ago. Now that our family photo has been taken, I hope to get my Christmas cards out soon.

Game playing is the major activity going on around here. We had a ton of games to play before we opened our gifts, but afterwards there was a ton more. I wonder if we will get to play them all before everyone starts leaving.

Chaos occurs when you have 8 adults, 1 toddler, and Christmas. But it's a good chaos. Henry is normally a happy baby and hasn't really been getting into things, so it isn't hard having him here in our non-child-proof house, so that's good.

Chaos is when you mislabel 4 different gifts so when they are being opened you have to yell: That's not for you! I did forewarn them that that might happen though, but I thought maybe one or two might be, but four?

I wrap gifts without putting names on the packages to keep things interesting. Eric, Ryan, and Alex actually figured out the basic system this year, but apparently I got confused while doing it. More or less, a person's birth month number or day might represent them, with those numbers being added together for group gifts. I need to come up with a different system next year. We might go back to the wrapping paper method.

Anyway, we went caroling in the rain Friday night. That meant wet, cold, and mud, but a lot of fun, too. Dinner and games followed. It was a great evening.