family christmas party

Aww, it was the usual family party.

Here they are frosting cupcakes for Baby Jesus.

I don't see enough of this child, and tonight I hugged and kissed him a couple times, told him how much I love him.  

I teased him about Mexico:  "Me and you can go there, and swim in the pool, and I'll take you on the bus to Walmart.  It'd be fun!"  He snickered and frowned at me.  He'd rather stick with his mother.

I've met her.  I understand.

The meal was the usual cheesy potatoes, seven-layer salad, meatballs, and shrimp. Heidi brought fancy chicken legs. Dannell brought fruit and dip.  A couple new recipes were tried, and they were excellent. The Greek dip was pretty fantastic, and the egg rolls were spicy and delicious.

Okay, but this is weird. Kirsten brought teddy grahams and frosting for them made of cool whip, cream cheese, and funfetti cake mix.

Sounds sweet and divine, right?

Some people thought it was dip for the shrimp.

They dipped shrimp in it and ATE it.

Okay, that's weird.

And yet, it seems all are unharmed.

These two guys were way excited about the whole occasion.  

t.c. likes to talk about trucks on the road. They call them tractor-trailers, and the ones without trailers are naked, which is evidently hilarious.   John mentions some have gas.  Others have other issues, and apparently he finds this as funny as Little Jay used to find stories about aliens' butts.

Kid humor, kid jokes--incomprehensible, but the laughter is so much fun.

Later the two were trying to assemble a race track and discussing it VERY LOUDLY.  Tim objected, "Please use an indoor voice!  You're yelling directly in my ear and it HURTS!"

t.c. said Tim was the one who was yelling.   We laughed.  It's all hard to tell.

The living room is just too small for gifts, so we moved all this out to the family room. It was a good decision.  Last year John suggested it, as we crammed into the living room, tripping over debris, and I didn't forget.

We gave her this big, fancy jewelry box, and I thought it was a gift she'd enjoy more when she was older.

No!

She was in love with the little spinning ballerina and even stood up and danced to the music.  As I watched her, I thought how she wasn't even born last year, and here she is less than a year later so fully HERSELF. 

Yesterday she went grocery shopping with Julia, Kari and me.  Here she is tonight participating in the Christmas party.  

Miraculous.

This race track--shake the cars to give them power, and then look out.  Dan and Alicia gave this to l.c.

This Barbie tent was way more challenging than you'd think.  I tried. Maria tried.  John made some adjustments.  Seriously, all this for a Barbie tent?

These remote control cars looked cool in the boxes, but wow were they fast.  They took off and smashed into every stick of furniture in the house, into the baseboards and door frames, into scurrying dogs, people's feet.  They were pretty impressive.

And here's these two at the end of the evening.  It's coming on 11:30 and here they still are doing lego in the night.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, formal worship service at church. It's beautiful to be in that sanctuary in candlelight at dusk, as the stained glass windows turn from colorful to dark, listening to that old familiar story again about faith,trust, miracles, and love.

Then it's Swedish meatballs at Grandma and Grandpa's, cousins and mayhem, and Santa Claus.

(Where did we stash that bag of Christmas stockings?)

Onward. Merry Christmas. love, Val