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Sunday, December 17

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We certainly appreciated the help of Mark and Diane who were here from Maine for several days before our Sunday Christmas lunch. This is what our garage looked like on Sunday morning. No, we don’t keep carpet on our garage floor where we park the cars. We store it on rolls throughout the year.

The table in the kitchen was full of all kinds of delicious-looking food as we prepared for our Christmas brunch at 12:30 PM.

There were egg dishes, breakfast potatoes, sausage, French toast, bacon, biscuits, creamed dry beef and fruit. The desserts were on the side bar: donuts, long johns and sticky buns (which I forgot to photograph). Every married couple brought something.

Time to eat.

The quote of the day came from five-year-old Jade (blonde with her back to the camera). She asked her mom, “Can my French toast be considered my meat?” Maybe because it was in a 9 x 12 cake pan in full bread slices and looked a bit like meat when sliced. 🙂

Enjoying the meal. Sorry everyone who was eating and chewing food when I took the pictures.

When we learned that Nate had his large Montana elk rack in his car, everyone wanted to see it.

Anthony wanted a chance to hold it.

Jasmine was encouraged to see if she could reach the antler tips.

Little sister Natalie wanted to try it as well.

She did it!

Jeff and Nate discussing the rack.

While waiting for everyone to get their chairs in a circle for the Now-You-Have-It-Now-You-Don’t game, I took a picture of these five. Zach holding his nephew Waylon, Nate holding his daughter Emmy and Cerwin.

Three generations. Nate, Emmy and Cerwin. If I had thought about it, I should have included Jeff and make it four generations.

I am always occupied with the Now-You-Have-It-Now-You-Don’t game and forget to take pictures.

After the game, we made a few announcements. First, when asking if it was a good time for us to stop having a Christmas dinner here because everyone is so busy. We got a resounding “no”- especially from the grandchildren, and Anthony said it would make him sad to not play the Now-You-Have-It-Now-You-Don’t game.

So, we will keep on having a Christmas meal here as long as we can. With all the help this year and everyone bringing food, they made it easy. The brunch-kind-of-meal was so popular that they voted on doing it again next year. This year our daughters Diane and Deb were the force behind planning the menu.

After that we showed the following slide from Donovan and Diana, using their boys (Bennett and Waylon) to announce that they are expecting a baby in June.

Our concluding activity was an old video from when some of the now grown grandchildren were toddlers and young children. After that, several stayed and visited before going home.

Mark and Diane’s Pennsylvania family (Nate & Abby’s family and Lydia) stayed for their family Christmas activities. While the adults visited and did some cleanup Anthony, Natalie and Jasmine asked to watch Paw Patrol in the kid’s room.

According to the time on my picture, it was about 6 pm here when they did a family facetime chat and Christmas gift exchange. Here they were visiting with Josiah, Becca and Andre in California (top) and Hezekiah, Kayla and Stetson in Tennessee (bottom). You will notice in the insert that this was Diane’s phone.

Everyone trying to see cell phones.

This blurred photo is from Nsimba and Elizabeth’s family in Maine. I think Nicodemus was talking in this shot.

Each of the Myers six households exchanged family names ahead of time and bought and sent gifts for this event. It looks like Hezekiah’s family is opening their gifts.

Nate and Abby’s family received gifts from Hezekiah and Kayla. Diane is holding her phone so they can see Jasmine opening a gift.

Diane and Abby watching someone open gifts.

After their gift exchange, those in our house played a game with ping pong balls. The point of the game was to get a ping pong ball in a cupcake pan by first bouncing it on the table.

Diane had numbers in the bottom of each cupcake section that matched the bottom of the cups. When your ball landed in a cupcake section, you claimed a gift by looking in the cup withe the same number.

Sometimes there was a snack in the cup, other times there was a note to choose a gift from a box. Cerwin got some snacks, and I won a bag of ground maple coffee (which we have been enjoying this week.) I am not a huge fan of flavored coffee, but Cerwin is combining it with regular coffee making the scent and taste quite delightful.

Renee is one of our 2023 great grandbabies. She was born in February and is already trying to walk.

So, why would we consider not having a family Christmas meal here after this very fun-filled day? 🙂