Sunday, December 2

Gathering for prayer before the meal – but singing happy birthday to Lydia first.

Prayer

Jesse was first in line for the food buffet. I made “haystacks”, which means you can put together a large salad with anything you want. Or if you don’t like salads, there is chili con carne, dinner rolls and relishes.

We enjoyed having Katie (in red) join our family this year. She is a young friend of Roy and Deb.

Cup cakes by our niece – Amy Rohrer

We always have those who like to make sure I notice them! 🙂

A table for 11 in the room behind the garage.

Seating for 22 in the garage area

Jade and Uncle Nate

I’m not sure if there weren’t enough seats as we prepared to take a family picture or why there are three sitting on one chair. 🙂

Here we are. I find it amazing that there were only two of us 55 years ago. This year there were 32 of us (Katie took the picture). We missed having Nsimba, Elizabeth, Nicodemus, and Kayla join us. Maybe next year.

Then we prepared for our annual Christmas game of Now-You-Have-It-Now-You-Don’t. Everyone chose a gift from the middle of the room. Cerwin and I buy these gifts – in the price range of $3.

We made two circles because of the large group and played the game with dice this year.

We usually used numbers, but saw this version a few months ago and decided to try it as it was becoming complicated to call numbers. I think it worked quite well. We may make a few tweaks next year.

It looks like Roy rolled the dice that said “exchange your gift with someone.”

I found large (5″) foam dice on Amazon, then wrote the same thing on each one. Left one – meant, everyone pass your gift one person to the left.

If you got “Exchange – Keep – After one round”, you could choose any available gift and keep it. There was also a “Exchange with anyone”. For either of these, you could go to anyone in the room – in either circle.

This year we stopped after one round because Mark and Hannah had to leave by 3 pm. When we finished, you could keep what ever was on your lap, or try to barter with someone.

Finally – our family project this year – in lieu of gift-giving to each other was the Root Cellar in Lewiston, Maine – chosen by Mark and Diane’s family. The Root Cellar helps immigrants and others establish roots in the Lewiston area of Maine.  They gave us a list of needs: things for kids programs, tools for woodworking, gift cards and cash to buy some of those supplies – also a sweeper.

Hannah had to leave by 3 pm so she would be home for the early morning milking on the Bisson Farm near Topsham, Maine. They took the above supplies with them.

Diane stayed behind to help with Josiah for a week and take him to appointments while Cerwin and I drove to Florida to move a TFC chapel from Ocala to Dade City. You will read about that in another day or two. (I am posting this from a motel near Dade City.)