Christmas Day 2013

There's nothing like having little kids in the house for Christmas morning!  They were all so excited to see what Santa had left for them under the tree!

"What Does the Fox Say?"

 It was a fun morning!  After opening up all the presents, we had our traditional apple pancake and sausages breakfast!  It is a favorite of everyone!  Thank you Cindi Ingersoll for the recipe so many years ago!

One of the highlights of the day for us and every family who has a missionary or two, is getting to talk to them! First, we got to talk to Hannah in Joao Pessoa, Brazil!  We used Facetime on Facebook.  It was a pretty awful connection at first, but after a couple of tries it worked out pretty well.  She looked so happy and we had a wonderful talk.  She loves her mission so much and it shows in her countenance!

After we talked to Hannah, (I forgot to take a picture of her on the computer screen), we got to Skype with Eric!  It was awesome as well.  He is doing so well in Georgia and is also so happy to be a missionary!  We got to talk to each of them for about an hour and it was so hard to hang up!  It's a good thing we had a houseful of people to distract us from being sad about having to say good-bye to them!

We sure do love those missionary kids and are so very proud of them both!

Joel and Erin came up in the afternoon to join us for dinner. (I can't believe I didn't take any pictures of them!!  So Sorry!) We had our traditional fondue, except this year I didn't do hot oil because a couple of years ago we nearly set the table on fire and it was very scarey!  This time we had cheese and chocolate fondue.  We had summer sausage and those little hot dogs and some cut up ham for our meats instead of steak and chicken.  I think it turned out fine, but I'm kind of thinking of starting a new tradition next year that is different from fondue entirely!  It's a lot of work and a big mess to clean up!!  Everyone was awesome about helping though, so that really helped a lot.

After dinner cleanup, everyone was pretty wiped out.  We all went downstairs and watched a movie and relaxed.  It was a beautiful and very blessed Christmas.  I'm so grateful for the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ, and for the opportunity it gives us to express love for those that mean so much to us.  We were able to talk to all of our children at some point during the day and it reminds us how truly blessed we are to have so many to love!