December 27, 2009--Christmas at our house

It's hard to believe another Christmas has come and gone. This year my family came down and spent Christmas with us, and it was so much fun having them all here. I fixed so much food for everyone--turkey and ham, potatoes and gravy, stuffing, jellied cranberry sauce, salad, green bean casserole, cranberry bread, blueberry lemon poppyseed brunch cake, pumpkin pie, cookies, baklava, egg nog, and apple cider. My mom also brought in two more kinds of pie--lemon meringue and pineapple cherry. It was unreal how much food there was!

We woke up pretty early--not 3:00 am this year like we did a few years back, but it was about a quarter to five when Erick woke me up. He's such a big kid on Christmas morning. We had saved up over the last few months to buy bikes for all the kids, and so we were very excited to see the kids' expressions when they saw their bikes. We'd purchased a couple of smaller gifts, too, so they'd have something under the tree to throw them off that they were getting something major.

A couple of them did figure out they were getting something. Jay saw one of them in the garage--I guess someone didn't shut the door all the way. Joy knew she was getting something big, because we were in a hurry to make her go away when we had the garage door open once. But the rest had no idea and were so surprised. They all had such good attitudes about only getting two small presents each, too.

Our families came at lunchtime. We had twenty people here altogether--eight in our family, plus my mom and dad, my sister and her husband and my niece, my brother and his wife and my niece, my sister in college, and the three siblings that still live at home. Only one sibling was missing--my sister who is in Israel for six months. We talked to her on Skype while she was here, though.

We always do a family gift exchange and draw names, even the one in Israel. She had my brother-in-law and sent him a shofar and little Jewish hat. He spent all day trying to figure out how to play that thing. He even watched a YouTube video to try and learn how and had absolutely no success. It was hilarious. It just made a pathetic squeaky sound like it was dying.

Most of them went home that evening, but my sister and her husband and my adorable niece stayed overnight. My niece is so cute and smart and she kept saying, "Wisa! Wisa!" to me. I wish I could keep her.

So now Christmas is over. Today the District Superintendent came to our church and spoke for Erick's installation service here, and it was really good. It's really snowy out now, though. Too bad it didn't snow like this on Christmas. My family would be all snowed in and then they'd have to stay here longer. :)