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.

Crying in Safeway

 One thing about Allen is that he loves to give gifts. He really is a true Santa Claus. 

Today we went to give a gift to one of our favorite cashiers at Safeway. He always talks to all the cashiers and knows them and that's how he got to know her. We have another connection because I taught her daughter in grade 3. A few years ago her husband died suddenly and we often wonder what we can do to help them as they work through the loss of their dad and husband. Allen had bought a gift card to a restaurant and we went through her till. He placed it on the belt, along with the groceries we were buying. She started to ring in our items and then she froze and looked up at us. "You didn't have to do that," she said. Allen told her he knew, but he wanted to...and Merry Christmas and all that. That's when her tears started...and so did mine.

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!