Remembering the Holidays - Christmas Day

Happy Rudolph Day!

I may or may not do a Christmas post each month on the 25th, but this month I am. Here's the review of our fun Christmas Day 2013.

Even though no one woke up super early, with a house full of people it took a while for everyone to get ready for breakfast. (Remember our family tradition is to get dressed, make beds, eat breakfast and do the dishes before opening any presents. It's worked just fine for over 30 years!) Fortunately, everyone was patient and had fun visiting and playing while they waited.

And the cinnamon rolls turned out great! (This year we used my mom's roll dough recipe instead of our usual potato roll dough. Either one is delicious.)

Proof that Santa came:

We also had to take the traditional "stand by your stocking" pictures before we could take them down. Even grown-up children like to be silly.

And toddlers don't always like to pose for pictures.

Then it was time to open presents!

Stockings first.

Then everything else.

The memorable gift of the day was the one from the kids to their dad. And it was really the wrapping that made it memorable. You're familiar with the box-in-a-box-in-a-box wrapping trick, right? Wayne is known for predicting ahead of time what a gift will be, so the kids took advantage of that, and the first box had "Guess what's inside?" marked on it. So he did. While he mentioned it could be a rock or a sock, he went with refrigerator. Inside was a sock and another box with the same question. He stuck with refrigerator. This time it was a rock with another box. Even though the boxes were getting smaller, he stuck with refrigerator. That box revealed the refrigerator! By this time everyone was in tears from laughing. And there was still one more gift inside. (Which turned out to be tickets for an afternoon intra-coastal cruise.) Apparently Megan tried this once for one of her brothers and he didn't think it was humorous at all, so she was very leery when the others suggested they do this. She was quite relieved that it turned out so well. And to make it even better, when we talked with Elder Steven, he said he had the same idea earlier that week and was looking forward to doing it for Christmas 2014, complete with the picture of the refrigerator! I think he was kind of disappointed that he won't be able to do that with the same effect. (And to make it even funnier, last year he was given an actual refrigerator for his office. Too bad we didn't try this fun activity then.) Anyway, we hope this little story brings you as much pleasure as it brought us. We'll have fun remembering it always.

As is usual when there's a missionary in the family, the highlight of the day was talking with him. We tried Skype for a few minutes, but gave up and went to just the phone. He really does live out in the sticks where internet service isn't reliable, even if his city (Huambo, Angola - which we learned is pronouced "whawmboo") has a population of 1,000,000. He's doing great, and we were able to find a few pictures of some of his December activities. Technically, I guess he spent Christmas Day in Lubango (pronounced with "loobawngoo") with his zone, but the internet doesn't work any more reliably there.

Fay made yummy Santa fruit kabobs, (Yay for Pinterest!) and after snacks for lunch it was time to make a trip to the airport so Weston's family could return home. We're so grateful they made the effort to visit us, and we had a great time with them. (Pictures of our pre-Christmas activities coming soon.)  We sure have wonderful memories of Christmas 2013 and hope you do too!