Christmas 2024

Christmas truly is the most wonderful time of the year. Our 2024 Christmas was busy and rewarding. 

We don't really do a good job of decorating for many holidays around our house - but we definitely do a little more for Christmas Our tree had a designer approach....all silver and white (beads and tinsel, but alarmingly, no Christmas balls!) I really liked it. It was all Allen's idea but I happily went along. I loved having it up and sitting by the tree to read each day. The Christmas gifts were wrapped in paper that matched the theme as well. Allen is so clever!

All the fun started on December 22 when Jill and Chase arrived from Edmonton. Peirce and Michael also came over and there was a big sleepover in the family room (bigger people means bigger sleepovers!) It was so fun to have them here and my heart was especially happy to see everyone get along so well. Grandma Jensen also came and spent a number of days with us, which added a lot of fun to our time together. A friend of ours, Meredith, also spent time with us over the holidays.

Christmas Sunday at church was a fantastic musical program. There were a lot of songs I had never heard and our ward's little choir easily took up the challenge of the complicated music. It was really nice to all go to church togethr. I didn't want to pressure Peirce into attending and so I told to Peirce him it would be fine either way. After talking it over with Michael, happily, they decided they would attend with us. Peirce said that the first time someone said something stupid to him though he was going to march out. There was no need for that. Everyone was so happy to see him and to meet Michael. Again, a heart warming experience. 

My dirty little secret about Christmas is that Allen does most of the shopping to get us ready for Christmas. In turn, I try to do most of the cooking....although everyone helped a lot. Saturday night when everyone arrived, we had our traditional Chinese Food night. On Christmas Eve, we had a six course meal! Sunday was the regular turkey dinner and on Boxing Day we enjoyed a pot luck with friends at the church. 

On Christmas Day, we went to a movie: The Boys in the Boat. I read that book years ago and thoroughly enjoyed the movie as well (although, I still say the book was better). Our friend, Meredith came with us to the movie. I even decided to use the word "swing" from the book for my word of the year. More on that later.

Jill, Chase, Peirce and I volunteered to usher at Storybook Theatre. We got to see One Christmas Carol....which was a version of the story told by one actor playing ALL the parts. It was really something else. That takes some talent!

Allen took on the challenge from our Stake President to make sure the social needs of people we knew were met. It meant that he invited family friend over for dinner on Christmas Day, organized a Boxing Day pot luck, a young families dinner (lots of kids and lots of fun and lots of noise!) and an empty nesters pot luck. Phew!! It was a lot of socializing. LOL 

On New Year's Eve, Jill and Chase invited their friends, the Holoboffs over. We had breakfast supper and then played games. The Holoboffs are really great. We were really happy to spend the evening with the cool kids! LOL 

Being together and having everyone enjoy being together is really what made our Christmas great. We have a wonderful family.

Second Christmas

 For our second Christmas we celebrated with Grandma. We were worried that she might not be able to come because it has been so cold lately - but on Christmas Eve the cold spell ended and things warmed up tremendously. So grateful! 

Christmas Eve was Chinese food and a movie (Scent of a Woman....strange choice for Christmas Eve....but alas!)

Christmas morning we opened stockings and then headed off to church. I was playing the organ and the choir did a beautiful cantata. It was really amazing. 

Later, there was another Santa visit by Allen. We have a family in our ward where the parents are absent and kids are living with their older brother so he helped them with presents by taking them shopping to buy gifts for their siblings and then today he showed up with stockings for them. 

Later we opened gifts. Grandma went off to her sister's house for dinner and we had ham and scalloped potatoes and an amazing cranberry cheesecake for dessert. I'm not one to make fancy desserts often. This one was a winner! 

I was trying to get a selfie of us. Finally Peirce said he should try. We are laughing at how simple it was for him! LOL

Christmas Cranberry Cheesecake. So good!

Two tricks we learned this weekend when it comes to Bentley: 1. If you buy him a bone he will be quite busy and stay distracted with it while we open presents. 2. He loves getting a new ball! He played for hours.

Early Christmas Celebrations

There are a lot of memes and commentaries on social media about how women do all the work for Christmas and the husband just shows up and sees what everyone got for presents. That isn't the case in our house. Allen does the bulk of the gift planning and buying and he's great at it. He also is a great help at getting our house ready for Christmas. I'm so grateful for him!

 

This year Jill and Chase are going to Ontario for Christmas so decided we would do Christmas with them the weekend before. I was not sure it was really going to be that great....but it was really a wonderful weekend! 

Jill and Chase and Peirce all came over for dinner on Saturday. We ordered a meat platter from one of our favorite restaurants, Big T's, and added some great Christmas salads. It was a great feast!

After dinner, we had a little family pranking to follow up on. There has been a long standing back and forth between us and the NAckroyds. 

Allen also had a visit to go do with the Payne's as Santa Claus. It was quite a busy night! 

Later that night, we watched a movie (or rather, turned a movie on and fell asleep). 

Sunday morning was Christmas stockings and then we went to church in Jill and Chase's ward. After church, we opened presents and had an amazing turkey dinner! 

Not a tennis racket?

Our turkey was so big it was busting out of the roaster! :) 

Those beautiful blue plates were one of my Christmas presents from my dear husband. 

On Sunday Allen also went and played Santa Claus for the Payne's. It was a lot of fun!

It was really a great weekend. It is fun to have our family all together. I love how Jill and Peirce and Chase all get along so well and have a good time together. I feel richly blessed!

Christmas

Her car had been in for repairs for quite a while and so it also meant we got to drive her to work. It was great because that meant lots of visiting time.

On Christmas Eve, we played games together. Jackbox is a lot of fun!

Allen always likes to take something over to his godchildren, Antonio's boys - and so he dresses up and heads out as Santa. They really love it!

Santa was very good to us this year. Lots of clothes and books and other fun things....like a pie lifter! LOL

We usually have a few extra people for Christmas dinner. I really had to keep reminding myself to make small servings of each dish. Dinner was really great!

Letourneaus gave us some sparkly pear juice! Delicious! I have to remember to guy that kind of stuff.

We also had a zoom call with Grandma (she had spent the day at Brad and Jill's) and Gaylene and Duane (they were in Kelowna with Neil, Rachelle and Jordan....different rules in BC) and Taylor and Britt in Utah as well as Sydney who was in Airdrie at her (drum roll.....) fiance's house, Nathan Muller (son of Becky and Brian Muller!) Who would have thought their kids would get engaged?! It's like a match made in heaven. 

Later in the day we had planned to watch a movie, but the truth was, everyone really just needed a little quiet time - so reading became the focus. It was a wonderful day!

Family Chess

I have a goal for 2020 to have Family Home Evening each week. We started off today by learning to play chess because I bought us a vertical chess game to put on our wall. We watched a video to review what moves all the pieces can make and then we were off. Everyone really liked it. Games of strategy are always a hit with our family. After, Peirce even thanked Allen and I for playing with him. That always warms my heart!

Merry Christmas!

Life sure is different from when our kids were little. No one was up before 9 am today. I had some lovely quiet time sitting by the tree, prepping breakfast, and just relaxing. This year I made overnight French Toast. I was always leery of stuff like that. How could bread that has soaked in milk all night be good? I had visions of it being goopy. Blech. It wasn't though. It was delicious!

Once again, there was an abundance of gifts to open. We are pretty lucky!

 I got a beautiful new purse. I'll feel so fancy using it!

Frank has a thing about Santa hats. He thinks they are a toy!

We had a great dinner: turkey, stuffing, lots of veggies, mashed potatoes and gravy. Dessert was apple crisp. I was going to make a pie, but I really should have done it the day before. There was not enough time on Christmas day. It was delicious though!

There were more games.

In the evening we went to a movie. This has become our tradition on the evening of Christmas Day. It's a great way to relax. We rarely go to a movie as an entire family, so it's fun to do that together on Christmas Day. This year Tony bought the tickets. Thank you Tony!

Christmas Eve

Today was full of last minute preparations during the day. In the evening, after Peirce was finished work at Safeway, we had Chinese Food and played games. After, we had planned to go to the nativity pageant, but it seemed like staying in would be a better idea. We watched a movie. It was the Christmas class, Die Hard! LOL Some of us stayed up VERY late. Some of us went to bed at a more reasonable time (Peirce and I). They rest have much better late night stamina, I guess.

 You can't see it too well, but Jill went over to the Sawa Sawa's 

tonight and they gave her an African skirt. So beautiful!

 Chico was barely in the game.

 Phase 10 was a hit.

Even Allen played!