My Christmas Gift

 When Ron asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I actually gave him and idea, because I already had something for him. Since he ordered it from Amazon, I knew exactly how much it cost and when it arrived. lol 😉I had given him several online options for ordering it, but I guess he was only comfortable with Amazon and the prices only varied slightly in the options. It was a Willow Tree Zampognaro (Shepherd with Bagpipe). I had been looking at it for a year, hoping that it would go on sale. I have decided that Willow Tree never puts anything on sale. Anyway... it is perfect with my Willow Tree nativity set. What I got for Ron was an Echo Dot. He had been commenting several times that he wasn't getting enough classical music around here. So, I decided that would be perfect...all he has to do is "tell it to play". Which means I have to listen to more classical music than I would like... but he also figured out how to tell it to play Don Williams... which is perfect for me. 

Christmas Dinner

 I did a post about Christmas morning... here is a little description of the rest of Christmas day. We had a big family dinner, frosting cookies, cousin gifts, Baba/Papa gifts, doing the traditional Thompson family Christmas story, "Happy Birthday" cupcakes, and an awesome video that Audrey put together about "Give Me This Mountain". I only have a handful of pictures to post... we were too busy to take pictures- lol. 😉

Everyone helped with food for dinner. Since we had already eaten turkey and prime rib... dinner was ham. Annie made the cookies for the kids to decorate. I got a couple of pictures of that. When we did the cousin gift exchange, we went in order and one at a time. When we did the gifts from Baba and Papa, we passed out the gifts, so that everyone had one... then we said "go". All opening at the same time. It was fun. Annie was really wanting to do the candle light, songs, and Christmas story, since everyone was together. And it is traditional at their house to do the cupcakes. We used battery powered lights instead of candles. It still worked great. "Give Me This Mountain" was our theme for the Yosemite gathering. With that in mind, Audrey put together a video, with some thing that each member of the family conquered or accomplished in 2023. It was amazing. We were all crying by the end... especially with it showing Micah saying good bye to his dad this year. 

It was an amazing Christmas together. And a miracle to get that many of us here.

Thompsons to New York

 Mike and Carrie and the boys flew to New York on Christmas day. They did some things in New York City, saw some church history sights, went to Boston, visited at least one university, and got to spend New Years Eve at Times Square. Here are pictures that they posted on FaceBook. I am sure that these aren't in chronological order. Looks like they stayed "bundled up" the entire time. They got back home before the snow settled in there.

Christmas Morning

 I think we got the best Christmas morning deal... with the Simms at our house. Those kids are old enough to "wait". They didn't open gifts until about 10:30, so that Alexs' parents could watch by zoom. Round one of breakfast was cereal and round two was cinnamon rolls and eggs. Annie and I had to spend most of that day cooking. (Actually, I had prepped most of my cooking on Saturday... so my part was pretty simple.) Then Andersons and Petes brought side dishes and rolls. Since we had prime rib and turkey on Christmas Eve... we had ham for Christmas dinner. Dinner was at our house about 5. (I might be able to gather up a few more pics of that later.) This post is just Christmas morning pics. I gathered a few of those from Facebook. Thompsons had Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve, so they could fly to New York on Christmas day. Christiansens had Christmas morning at the rv. (I don't have pics of that.) A couple of the gifts at Andersons was the birds and going to a Wicked performance. 

Christmas Eve at Andersons

 It is "tradition" at Andersons for Christmas Eve, for Sam to cook prime rib and potatoes. This year since he was cooking for 27 of us... he added air fried turkey too. The rest of us brought side dishes and dessert. Hailey brought a beautiful Christmas cake. It is also "tradition" to have a puppet show and a candy bar exchange. It was a bit crazier than normal with so many of us there. Christiansens just got into the RV park about 6 pm. We all made it to Andersons for dinner by 7:30. It was a fun evening together. This years puppet show was "Charlie Brown's Christmas".