Sunday December 23, 2007

 

 

My Favorite Pictures

From Our Christmas Celebration Today

 

I usually serve a buffet-style meal, as it seems to work best for our family, and I don’t need quite as many serving dishes.

 

I served chicken and rice, sweet potato casserole, baked mixed vegetables, seven-layer salad, pickled red beet eggs, cookies, and angel food cake with tapioca and cherry pie topping.

 

 

Chris and Jeff

 

Jere gave Kristen rabbit ears

 

So she gave him an elbow!

(I got a good picture of them, but it didn’t make my favorites.)

 

Deb and Jesse

 

Deb and Kristen

 

We like to read a poem, book, or show a video that reminds us of the real meaning of Christmas before opening gifts.  This year Jere read the meaning of the song, Twelve Days of Christmas.

 

This is as pretty as our garage gets ~ decorated for Christmas and full of family.

 

The youngest grandchild always gets the honor of opening the first gift.  Jesse seems pleased that his cousin Jordan is helping him. 

 

Three-year-old Jared loved getting presents.  When it was his turn, he said, “I want the biggest one.”  It just happened to be his.

 

Next was Ian ~ who was just as excited.

 

Zachary was quite serious when opening his gifts, but really liked what he got.

 

Ian was pleased to pose with Gloria, and the gifts he had given her.  He even helped his mom sew the fuzzy, horse pillowcase.

 

David reading the note on one of his packages.

 

Diana (left) gave Jana a Nancy Drew book (actually two books in one) and note paper.  Nancy Drew!  I used to read those books.  Some things never change.

 

Diana with her gifts.

 

Jenna (left) was pleased with her gifts from Jana.

 

Josh received his gift from Jenna.  I always enjoy seeing them together.  Josh is only seven weeks older than her.  We call them our Pennsylvania twins, and when Hezekiah is here from Maine, we have triplets.  He was born partway between these two.

 

Nathan got the shirt he wanted.

 

Jordan got a Nittany Lion hat.

 

Apparently he is a Penn State fan.

 

It seems all babies chew on wrapping paper – at least until someone notices.

 

Cerwin’s mother and my step-mother opening gifts.

 

After the gift exchange, we played “Now-You-Have-It-Now-You-Don’t” with open gifts.

~~~

Everyone gets three numbers.

When your number is called you choose a gift.

Your gift is only safe after your third number is called.

Until then others can “steal” your gift.

 

Then we played a game that I read about on someone’s blog yesterday.  The picture above is of Deb drawing her part.

~~~

THE GAME

Our daughter-in-law Chris began the game by writing,

On Christmas 2007 it was rainy and windy, and Jared hoped he would see a donkey-deer.

The other day Jared couldn’t remember the name “reindeer”, and called it a donkey-deer.

Chris handed her paper to Jeff.  His job was to draw a picture describing her sentence.

He then handed his drawing to Jenna who wrote out what she thought his picture described.

She handed what she wrote to Deb, who drew what Jenna wrote – and on it went, around the room while we visited and watched the children playing with their gifts.

The last person to get it was me.  I had to draw a picture of Cerwin’s description of the artwork he received.  He wrote,

An archery hunter wishing he had a gun.

“Hoped” changed to “wishing” – not bad on that, a rather difficult word to draw.  It wasn’t too surprising that the deer stayed in the story – a much easier word to draw.

That was fun!

~~~

I must tell you about the gift we received from our children:  Twelve meals from Dish it Up (www.dishitupdinners.com), a place that prepares meals to order, which you can take home to eat or freeze. 

Our children know their mother well .  She doesn’t enjoy or have a lot of time to cook.  It will be fun to checkout this gift.

~~~

Next week (December 30 until January 2) we will celebrate with our Maine daughter and her family.