Family Christmas #1

We made it to the Engineer's family Christmas and back again with no major difficulties. In fact it was a sunny, but bitterly cold day. The kind where your footsteps squeek as you walk across the snow, but yet you want to be outside because it it so beautiful. Freshly fallen snow sparkling like a million diamonds. Trees laden with white fur coats. Gorgeous!! I took some photos as we travelled, but they were through our dirty van windows, so they really didn't do the beauty around us justice.

It was a good day, but it is never long enough. One of our nieces is studying in France for the year, but she was able to come home for Christmas. It was interesting to hear her stories about France. It is not as romantic a place as one might think. At least not when you're living there.

One niece and her husband are studying for doctorates out west, and were unable to make it home, as well as one nephew who works in California. Otherwise the rest of the family was there. We've become too large to fit in the old farmhouse anymore, so now we get together in the local Christian Reformed church basement. It is quite gezelik (Dutch for cozy) actually.

We had lunch and then Grandma couldn't resist not giving the grandchildren -- all sixteen plus some beaus -- Christmas gifts. How she does it, I'll never know, but she always does a wonderful job.

The few of us who have farther to go usually stick around yet for a light supper of sandwiches and left over desserts from lunch and then we head home in the cold silent darkness with the Christmas carols playing on the CD player and the heat blasting, hoping the kids will fall asleep after a busy day of play and over eating.