Two weeks of Christmas

I hardly know where to begin because so much has happened in the past two weeks.....

Monday, the 19th, we had the Southerlands and Beckie over for an evening of Christmas music.  Here are the three cellos playing carols.  Lucy was on her violin but outside the photo.

We also practiced "In The Stable", a lovely Christmas song with a children's choir.  Our plan was to sing it in Indiana for Alex.  

The rest of the week was rather quiet without Kirsti, Ryan, Alice , and Ivan to fill our days with fun.  Aside from our regular weekly routine, we delivered goodies to friends and neighbors.  We wrapped gifts. Below are photos from our Wednesday morning walk down Leona Ave.  Can you tell that they are imitating the board game Candy Land?  It is pretty extremely decorated, for sure!

We were hit with a winter storm on Thursday that also brought extreme cold so we hunkered down in the house all day.  Beckie and I did venture out to Costco Friday morning to buy rotisserie chickens for our Bethlehem dinner Sunday evening.  We also were anxious for news from Sarah who left Ogden Friday morning for her two day drive to Missouri.  Apparently, Friday through Wyoming was pretty harrowing.  Saturday, on the other hand, was longer but more relaxed.  Here is a cute photo of her dogs on the trip.

Saturday morning, I was feeling pretty lonely for family so I called up Emily and asked if Steve and I could hang out with them for an hour or so.  It was good to go over and visit.  We had Sam Carpintero over in the afternoon to watch "Muppet Christmas Carol" and to have dinner.  Elise arrived in time to eat and Sarah finally arrived around 8:30.  We saved her some sugar cookies to decorate so that is what she did while we watched "Scrooge".    

Christmas morning was quiet and relaxed since church didn't start until noon.  We had a nice breakfast and opened gifts.  

Church services went well.  I played "O Come O Come Emmanuel" on cello, the Primary children sang "The Friendly Beasts" and the teachers helped since we have such a small group of kids, and the choir had two numbers to sing.  I recruited Elise and Sarah to sing in the choir and they willingly agreed.  Bless them!  Steve was supposed to play a baritone/trombone duet of "O Holy Night" with me accompanying but Greg, the trombonist, came down with stomach flu Christmas Eve so the number was axed.  Here we are in the meetinghouse foyer after the services

When we got home from church around 1:30, it became like the scene out of Home Alone with the family running around trying to get out the door.  We were Greenwood bound and anxious to get there.  Emily and Joe rented a Yukon (who I immediately named Cornelius) and they had room for their family plus Elise.  The rest of us - Steve, me, Beckie, and Sarah - plus our luggage plus food for the Bethlehem dinner at the hotel (since no restaurant would be open Christmas night) and food for the family gathering the next day - crammed into our little Kia.  And away we went.  What about the dogs, you ask?  Well, in an extremely sane moment we had a couple of months ago, we decided that bringing four dogs with us would be just crazy so we hired a mother and  her teenage son from our church to come stay at our house with the dogs for the two days we were gone.  Best decision we ever made!  Anyway, back to Indiana - we all arrived at the Home 2 Suites safely.  The Bethlehem dinner was a little later than hoped and we had tons of leftover food.  

Monday, December 26th, we went over to Julina and Alex's for the day.  Steven and Tamara, who had spent Christmas with their good friends in Ohio, arrived around 11:30.  We had gift opening, a tour of Alex's train layout in the basement, a delicious dinner, the reenacted the Nativity story, and we ended with a family sing-along and play along.  Elise brought her viola, I brought my violin, and Julina had a cello which Noah played.  Emily and Sarah divided the piano part.  We sang "In The Stable".  We sang other carols.  And it was a beautiful time.  Here is what Alex said about it:  "It is difficult to convey the Joy I feel and felt during the sing along, it was one of the great moments in my life. I hope that the children that were there will one day experience the same".  This is also what he said:  "It is not hyperbole to say that we may not meet again in this mortal realm. So I want to convey to all of you how glad I am to be sealed to my family, and look forward to the time of the resurrection when we can all meet again and make beautiful music for our Savior. Please if there is anything in your life that would prevent you from being with us at that blessed event, get it taken care of with the proper priesthood authority"    What a beautiful and poignant statement!  It made all the craziness it took to make everything happen worth it.  

Photos from the day:

For the Nativity reenactment, Lucy was Mary, Joe was Joseph.  Steven, Elise, and Quinn were the 3 wise men, Sarah was a shepherd, Lucy was a sheep, Steve was a squirrel (!?!?), and I was the angel.  

After we returned to the hotel Monday night, some of the Southerlands went swimming in the indoor pool while others of us played games in the lobby that harkened back to many, many game nights around the family table through the years.

We all left for home Tuesday morning and arrived in Saint Louis a little after lunch time.  Before saying goodbye to Elise and Beckie, we had one last round of gift opening....gifts that we just couldn't fit in the Kia to Indiana...

Below are a couple of the gifts we received - a seed wreath from Sarah and an adorable hedgehog figurine that I have placed under my fiddle leaf fig plant...

We had not had a chance to visit  historic Saint Charles before Christmas so Steve, Sarah, Sam Carpintero and I went there Wednesday afternoon and had a lovely time.  All the holiday decor was still up and everything Christmas-related was on sale so I snagged two t-shirts for next year.  Plus a cute little squirrel that was meant to be an ornament but he is going to sit on my music shelf all year round.

On Thursday, Sarah left to spend a few days in Columbia to hang with Steven and Tamara and to see friends and visit favorite haunts.  Steve and I watched Lily and Bones here.  The bitter cold snap is over and we have had temperatures in the 60's!!!  SO CRAZY!!!  We have spent the end of the week putting away much of the Christmas decor.  We have also hauled several loads of free mulch from the Carondelet Park mulch site to bolster our backyard turn-around area.  We still have to take down our two last Christmas trees plus put away all the nativities and the outside decorations but Sarah will help us with that now that she has returned.  She will be with us all next week so look for many more photos of the adventures we have planned....