We finished cleaning the house in the morning. Unsurprisingly, it went faster than I expected. Joshua was a huge help. Then the house looked amazing! It seems like I should do it more often, but takes family buy-in too.
Then Nathan and family were here! We had lunch and then the kids...disappeared. Ben stuck his head into Joshua's room and Joshua said that he and Evelyn were just talking.
Nothing overly special happened...we talked, we ate, and got caught up.
Yesterday we couldn't find the present that Isaac had found and then wrapped for Larry and Isaac was rather sad about it. We checked all the trash and all around the tree.
Well, it turns out it was left at home. Larry kindly came over first thing in the morning on his way to his first appointment to unwrap a duck.
I'm a little behind on everything else, but made initial progress today. The groceries are ordered, most of the presents for this weekend are wrapped, and a tentative menu was figured out. I also sent several emails and started to deal with this week's laundry. Tomorrow will include some food prep and some cleaning, which will hopefully set us up well for Saturday morning when I expect we'll be doing most of the cleaning.
This morning I found the Christmas Ruiners moved baby Jesus and were all looking away. Isaac thought it was because the Ruiners were trying to ruin Christmas by ignoring Jesus, but I say they were just trying to keep watch over baby Jesus. And since they don't talk, we'll assume I'm correct.
We had a nice morning: a game, some chores, some preparation of food. Then off to Larry and Cheryl's!
Bruch was first and as always, it was delicious. It's one of my favorite meals of the year. Then presents. I got a wi-fi bird feeder and I'm really excited about it. Ben found a good deal on little nerf guns, and so gave one to everyone. Chaos ensued! But it was a fun chaos. Even Great-Grandma joined in and she was so cute when she was shooting her son.
There was also some discussion about Larry's socks and whether they had rubber ducks or pelicans on them. Fast forward to while we were opening presents. I have forgotten exactly what the conversation was about, but Isaac yells out, "No, they're pelicans!" The timing and delivery were spot on and everyone laughed.
Afterwards Isaac and I played Space Base with Scarlet and Jacob. They both got a copy of the game...Scarlet because we had her name and Jacob because we were asked for game ideas. It's a great game though, and it's always nice to go through the game once with people that know what they're doing.
It is also almost Larry's 70th birthday, so we celebrated that too!
We played a few minute-to-win-it games, ate as we felt like it, and just had a lovely time together.
And once again, the animals found the person they've been looking for all month. The cat offered some fish bones to Jesus, but it was because the cat treasured them and wanted to give his best to Jesus.
It was the most loveliest of days.
We saw Dad and Pat for breakfast.
We opened presents.
Joshua and I went to a Christmas Eve service with one of his friends while Ben and Isaac watched from home.
We played one of the games after church. It has a Minecraft theme, and was pretty fun.
It was an odd day. Joshua had a friend over for most of the day. Isaac and I went to the library for the 3D printer. I finished up some present stuff. Isaac and I went to a Hilldore Christmas get-together.
Ben and Joshua have colds, so they stayed home. They finished wrapping some presents and made sunglasses.
