A merry Christmas

Joanna and Ben arrived on Saturday, Dec. 22.  That was our candymaking day.  Rene and Joanna made divinity and fudge.  I had made another batch of fruitcake and some cookies earlier and Joanna and I made our caramels that day.

Sunday, we had a very nice Christmas program at church.  There were quite a few visitors, mostly young people who had grown up here and were now visiting their parents with their own little families.  We enjoyed visiting briefly with Casie and Joseph.

Ben and Shannon and Co. came over for dinner that evening.  Since Sadie was sitting in the high chair, Russell sat on Grandpa's lap.  Grandpa did sneak him some bites of food, but he's still pretty little to eat much.

On Monday, we started on the dinner preparations.  Joanna made two pies, cherry and pumpkin.  We also had sweet potato casserole, turkey and stuffing, potatoes and gravy, a relish plate, rolls, cranberry sauce and our traditional grape drink.  Most of it was homemade, including some of the pickles Rene made this summer. 

Here's the table.  The beautiful centerpiece was sent by Preston's mom, Brenda Franzen.  We have had "crackers" (the English version) for several years now.  One year, we had friends over for dinner and the mom, who is from England, brought crackers and taught us how to use them.  Now they are part of our celebration.

After dinner, we had our traditional FHE, although it was short this year due to the attention spans of a three year old, a one year old and an 8 month old.  After FHE, Shannon gave Sadie and Macey each a present and said they could open it.  (It was their Christmas pj's.)  Sadie cracked us all up by opening hers entirely with her teeth.  The three little ones changed into their Christmas jammies, we took a few pictures and B&S took their girlies home to bed.

 

On Christmas, we got up (not very early) and enjoyed a few gifts.  We skyped with the Franzens and the Manassas Scoresbys.  Then we packed up and went to Stevens Point, where we opened more gifts and enjoyed the day.  We played games several times over the week, sometimes with cheating and sometimes without.

Ben and Shannon came up again on Friday night for dinner.  We enjoyed being together.  Macey watched TV and read books.  Sadie denuded the Christmas tree of candy canes and enjoyed them.

On Saturday morning, Ben and Joanna packed up and went home, despite some snow.  We are so glad they could be here.  Christmas is always better when kids and grandkids are involved.