Our family arrives

Christmas Eve day I ran to Prairie Harvest and got some peppernuts.  

 Wouldn't this be so much faster than the original way?

 I sent Jill the recipe that was Ruth Jost's (an amazing Mennonite cook!).

 It takes a lot of time to roll out the long strips of "rope" and cut them.  Jill and Hannah did a great job!  I've become a lazy cook and just bought them. 

We watched our kids' Christmas Eve program on-line.  Would have loved to have been there to see the family do their version of "Emmanuel"!

A co-worker of Al's invited us to their church for their services so we ran into Wichita.

 After that spectacular program, we went out to eat.  I had looked on-line to see if there were any restaurants open on Christmas Eve, and sure enough, there were a few!  We went to Red Rock Canyon, which we love!

Our tradition for after Christmas Eve services is to go out and see lights.

 When we got home, we listened to our church's service.

Since two of our children work at churches, they are not able to be with us on Christmas Day.  Sometimes we don't have our Christmas until January, but this year, everyone was able to come soon after!  We spent Christmas Day alone and in the evening, went out to see lights in our town.

 We got this text from Jill.

This led to more texts about what it was really like to travel in the 80's:

Staci:  Tell her in the 80s we had curvy roads and no arm bands.  I did more puking to go visit family than I want to recall!   That's what I remember about 80s traveling!

Josh:  Tell her in the 80s the only things to do in the car were stare out the window bored out of your mind, pester your siblings by crossing the imaginery line, read a book, or well....that's pretty much it.

Jill:  True, but we got to ride backwards in the back of the station wagon and stare at drivers behind us...and lay down all the seats to lay out sleeping bags...and in the conversion van we could turn around the seats to face each other.  We traveled in style!

And we got to put pins in the ceiling of the car to hold the fabric up...oh wait, we still get to do that.

On the 26th, Mindy and Jason were the first to arrive from Colorado!  We went to Back Alley for pizza!


After 7, the Wisconsiners arrived!  Although it was Claire's bedtime, they let her unwind first.  She played with the Russian nesting dolls that my parents had gotten when they went there.  All the kids have loved playing with those.

 And of course, a little wrestling with Papa before heading to bed!

 More Christmas fun to come!