Christmas Eve

We were going to do the family Christmas ting on Christmas eve instead of Christmas day. But we had all morning to get ready, nothing going on until noon. Or so I thought. I was still running around the house in various states of undress when the doorbell rang. The kids flung it wide and invited the slightly unexpected company in. I ran around the house picking up underwear hoping there was some way he wouldn’t notice.

It was uncle Leland. He had gotten up early and made the drive up getting here well before noon. After visiting for a bit he was ready to go ice fishing. We managed to get him to wait long enough for us to go with.

It was warm enough out that we didn’t think there was anyway there’d be enough ice to actually fish. We were wrong. The ice was many inches thick and they set to work boring holes. The ice creaked and groaned. I couldn’t handle it and stuck to the shore.

8 and I explored the shoreline. The ice had heaved and buckled all around the edges. We made our way through cat tails much taller than us and slid down the hills of ice. The The Goblin Child got tired of watching them sit staring at holes in the ice and came to join us. We explored our way clear to the play ground. Then it was time to get going.

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Then it was time for the Christmas festivities. It had been declared that lunch would be at noon. No waiting until evening to eat lunch this year. I was determined to support my mother in law in her declaration so we had to be there in time. We rushed home and got our soup warmed up then hauled our presents and food up. We ate, soup, deserts, home made ice cream, then we opened presents.

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Then we rushed off to the kids Christmas program. They had been practicing diligently, learning their lines and getting ready for their big night. They were doing a Christmas alphabet poem, each child had a letter and they all did a couple of songs together. They were exhausted from trying to fit everything into one day. 8 was barely hanging in there but managed to pull through. The whole service was beautiful and I always love the last song sung by candle light. They changed it up a little this year, everyone stood around the edges facing each other. It made taking pictures a little more obvious and quite awkward 😉

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