Christmas and New Years

 We planned on going to California for Christmas this year, along with Chris, Jessica and kids.  But the pandemic caused increased restrictions there, so we cancelled our plans.  Instead, we invited Chris and Jessica and family to come to our place for Christmas.  And they did!  Here's Miles, Gemma, Peyton, Jessica and Chris.

So our celebration included quite a few people; Reed, Dorothy and boys, Chris, Jessica and kids, and Gerald.  We planned our traditional Christmas Eve at our house, upstairs, with costumes and narration to review the birth of the Savior.  We followed up with our candle ceremony, where each of us lights a candle as we express whatever positive feelings we wish.  Both turned out so well.  There was a palpable spirit of goodness among us.  It was lovely.

After that we did our Christmas Eve gift giving for the kids.  PJs of course.  On a count of three, all scramble to open their gifts at once.  On went the pjs as we progressed to dessert.  It was all much fun.

Older kids prize sleep over early morning gift exchanges.  So our Christmas morning didn't really begin until 10:00 or so.  We handed out gifts and took the rest of the morning to watch each person open their gifts in turn.  We made a happy mess.  

When our Jessica is around we can count on a puzzle to do.  Here's Reed, Jessica, grandson Scott and

his Jessica hard at work.

We spent Christmas Evening at Reed and Dorothy's.  After a delicious dinner, we had a family talent show.  I say that loosely as the only family to actually do something was Reed, who played a beautiful piece on the piano, and our family of Layne, me, Gerald, Seth and Angelica singing a carol together.  It was not a work of art but an effort was made!  The rest of the evening was taken up with a game that entertained the players for a good long time.

The Gendreaus left the day after Christmas.  The remainder of us celebrated New Year's Eve at our house.  The guys played a game; even Layne, the game-avoider, joined in.  We girls, and Bruce, painted to an online tutorial.  It took quite a bit of time, but was so fun.  Now I want to do more.  Here's Scott's Jessica, Dorothy, Bruce and me with out masterpieces.  You might be able to see that Bruce didn't use the tutorial.  His is the one with the dots.

We toasted at midnight and popped poppers until they were all gone.  There was food galore, thanks to Layne.  Earlier in the day I sent him out for cheesecake and he came back with oodles of additional goodies.  Yup, we were buried in them and now have an emergency supply of sweet stuff.  Junk food, you could say.  Here are some of our celebrators:  Layne, me, Gerald, Seth, Reed, Jessica, Scott and Bruce.  

So it is away with 2020, a pivotal year by anyone's measurement.  It has been a year of a pandemic, our response to which is unprecedented.  Never have we locked up our whole society and shut down our economy on purpose before.  I can't help feeling that we have turned this into a disaster that we will be playing for, for years.  Added to that was all sorts of radical, violent demonstrations, along with a national election that certainly has been controversial, with accusations of voter fraud in the election of Joe Biden.  If that turns out to be true, we can only hope that it will be addressed and corrected.  It is terrible to contemplate that our elections cannot be trusted to be fair.

And so we close 2020 with hopes for a better year ahead.  We can hope, but I fear that there are greater troubles to come.  Here is hoping that we can find our way through it with some semblance of recovery and blessing.