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Tis the season

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By Sarah
 With all the festivities like watching D and M perform a program, 
 making Christmas crafts,
 attending the city's light festival,
and delivering gifts, we decided all that was missing was some time with extended family.  So, at rather the last moment, we packed up and hit the road and had a wonderful little trip.  We attended the annual Christmas party at Dan's great grandmother's house and had a blast.  It is so easy to enjoy Dan's family.  Just look at this picture of K & N with their great grandmother.  What's not to love?
I don't know how she does it, but Gma W can pick great gifs.  This trio of glasses wearing cousins sure were thrilled with their Frozen books, complete with stickers.

Mark & Kendra were magnificent hosts.  We got to spend lots of time with their family and their son is one lovable guy.  Natalie was in love with his helmet -- she seems to like any type of head gear.

An evening with Dan's just Dan's immediate family was a big, silly hit too.  Michelle came home wanting to mail gifts to her cousins "that love me."  That thought especially pertained to her oldest cousin and her siblings.  I appreciate some people are willing to take pictures to put in my children's scrapbooks for me.  (:  It was a short but worthwhile, wonderful trip.

P.S.  Before that picture of delivering gifts, there really should be a story about burned Christmas cookies and the crying that came after.  I had signed up to be on the LP book club email list and although I hadn't read any of the books yet, I was pretty excited to join in on their cookie exchange.  My mom and I spent all afternoon making cream cheese cookies and peanut butter blossom cookies -- 11 dozen of them.  Luckily the weather was nice so the children didn't mind playing in the back yard for part of it.  At the book club meeting I had a great time just being there but was thrilled to come home with a variety of lovely home made Christmas cookies to give away.  Since our dog has a weakness for baked goods even worse than mine, I decided the safest place for all those cookies was in our upper oven.

The next day life did not go according to plan.  I was feeding the missionaries so I knew we needed to be back from the barn park in time for dinner to be ready when they came over.  When it was time to leave the W. family, with 6 kids, managed to leave all right but we couldn't find Danny's boots anywhere.  Luckily they showed up when I had given up -- they were next to the parking lot.  In a rush to make dinner, I preheated the oven while I got the chicken ready.  When it was time to put the chicken in I opened the door.  And there before me was what was left of the Christmas cookies.  So, when the doorbell rang I was standing in front of my oven sobbing, embarrassed but too upset to stop.  I knew someday this would make a great story.  I knew my neighbors and friends wouldn't hate me if I didn't give them homemade cookies.  But all that time, money, effort, ignoring my kids to do it, and the work my new friends had put into their own cookies....  Luckily I have a very kind husband who told me it was totally understandable to cry in that situation and took over the dinner prep so I could compose myself in the pantry while he answered the door.  He truly is my knight in shinning armor some days.

I think this will go down as our biggest, most unique story of this Christmas season.  Hopefully it will never be repeated.







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