Family Christmas

Well, it's certainly been a few interesting weather days! We picked up a new toy on Saturday – an indoor/outdoor thermometer. I've almost regretted that purchase today – the highest it reached was 13 degrees. We didn't get nearly the nasty weather that was predicted over the weekend, but we did have a thin film of ice covered with an inch or so of snow.

Saturday ended up being a very nice birthday. Since the nasty weather stuff hadn't arrived yet, hubby took me out to the local Mexican restaurant for yet another birthday lunch. It's such fun to spread the celebration out over a few days! We did some local shopping afterward, then had a quiet evening. It was mid to late afternoon before it started raining here.

Sunday was fun. When we got up and it got daylight, we could see that we were missed by most of the storm. Even though there was a bit of snow, we knew we would be able to get to Grain Valley for our family Christmas. Hubby started cleaning off the walkway and the Jeep, and I started making the soup we were taking. I definitely had the easier set of chores!

We picked up Mom and took our time with our drive. The roads were really in pretty decent shape. We were the first to arrive at older daughter's house. Younger daughter and her hubby in Parkville had about five inches of snow to dig out of their driveway, so they were a little later arriving. Son and his family drove up from the south part of Blue Springs and said Highway 7 was not in good shape. So all in all, we may have had the least eventful morning of all!

We had a yummy lunch – everyone pitches in and we keep it simple: there were four soups to choose from, appetizers, and all kinds of yummy sweets. For many years we've taken a photo every Christmas with the grandkids – it was an especially good photo this year. The little girls were especially ready by that time to open gifts.

Jocelyn, at 5, could pick out her name on name tags and piled her gifts up. Cayley could read the rest and they handed out gifts. The next part was amazing and fun to watch – Jocelyn quietly sat back and let Cayley open her gifts first. She was perfectly content to do that. She ooh'ed and aah'ed right along with Cayley. Then when it was Jocelyn's turn, I think she said “Oh, I've always wanted one of those” with every gift she opened. The boys were gracious with their gifts – you can't go wrong with cash or gift cards for teenage boys!

Cayley got a loom for making the rubber band bracelets that are popular with younger girls now. The two 15-year-old boys ended up in the kitchen with that, watching instructional videos on their smart phones to try to figure it out for Cayley. It was nice to see them working together trying to figure it out.

The time to leave always comes much too quickly for me. Those times that we're all together are much too few and far between. But, we have quite a drive and prefer to be home before dark. It was a beautiful drive home. The roads were completely clear, and the snow made for some beautiful landscapes.

So now, before the 25^th, Christmas for us is over for another year. We plan on having Mom over for lunch Wednesday, but it will be a really quiet day. At least I didn't get up this morning feeling like it was time to put away the Christmas decorations! That actually happened last year......though I didn't follow through. I'm not a Christmas grinch, after all!