After we finished opening gifts at our house on the Saturday before Christmas, we gathered up some food, wrapped gifts, and Nerf weapons and prepared to journey to my home town for our family's Christmas celebration. However, right before we left, my husband received a call from work as has been the custom lately. Nearly every waking hour for the past two weekends he had been called into work to address yet another crisis, so I had grown accustomed to these work calls, but why did they have to call him in during our family Christmas celebration? So I left without him. Things got off to a slow start because my niece had to play in a soccer game that day putting her there over an hour late. All these delays put stress on my mother who only had a short period of time between our nuclear family gift exchange and the big family dinner she was hosting, so we will try to do better next year.
So, I watched the kids open their stockings and their gifts without my husband there to enjoy it. The kids were so fun to watch, as always, with all their excitement and exaggerated expressions. (Gift #847)
Thankfully, my husband arrived when it was time for the adults to exchange their gifts, but it was frustrating that we both had to drive all those miles separately and could not be together much of the day.
After our gift exchange we busily prepared the breakfast food items which we eat for dinner at Christmas time according to our family tradition. The highlight was getting to see our long lost cousin again. We watched a home movie from 1987 that brought back lots of memories for him and helped him reconnect whereas at Thanksgiving, everyone seemed so unfamiliar. As we parted, he told each one of us that he loved us and asked me personally when we could get together again, not wanting to wait until Thanksgiving. What a blessing it is to have him back! (Gift #848)
Our daughter loved wearing the red beret Nana gave her, but for some reason she decided to wear fuzzy pajama pants on her head for the last round of gifts. Silly girl!
The kids had a blast blasting each other with Nerf guns. Dinner was delicious. The home movie was hysterical. The kids could not stop laughing at our clothes and hair styles in the 80s. We exchanged gifts and just enjoyed being together. (Gift #849)
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