Recital
Clark and Elliot were both in a Christmas percussion recital. It was fun to see the whole Waterford middle school percussion group play together. Each of the boys did a marimba solo which you can watch if you are interested: Clark's solo Elliot's solo.
We always have an early Christmas Day at Alan's parents' house the Saturday before Christmas. Alan's parents make a real effort to have a nice day for us and we really look forward to it. We have a traditional breakfast and open presents and everything. It is always very fun. This year we managed to get Shirley to their house from the care center so that she could have an outing and be with us to celebrate the Christmas season. It was wonderful that she was well enough to stay for several hours.
This year for Christmas Eve dinner, in addition to Alan's parents, we had some other fun guests. We had our local LDS missionaries, Elder Lufe and Elder Lloyd. I wanted to make Christmas Eve nice for our missionaries, since I knew that other people were making a real effort to make things nice for Phillip and Loren. We also had been praying that we could find someone that didn't have anywhere to go Christmas Eve and no family to spend it with. One day Madeleine was talking with a friend at school that let her know that this year she and her sister would be spending Christmas Eve with their father and that their mother was going to be all alone this year and they were sad about it. So I called up the mom, explained what we wanted to do as a family and invited her to our house for dinner. She was so nice and was happy to accept our invitation. We had a really nice evening — despite the bad snowstorm we had just as everyone began to travel. We even got a short video of the elders doing the Haka for us — Elder Lufe is from New Zealand!
I always enjoy Christmas Day because we have a relaxed fun morning, usually a bit of a nap, and then we clean up a little and make homemade soup. This year, like last year, we were able to talk with Loren in Texas for an hour or so. If you look at the pictures, it looks a little funny, because we are all sitting around the kitchen table talking to and listening to the cordless phone on the lazy Susan. It was great to talk to him and he sounded really good! It's hard to believe that he will be home in two short months!
The day after Christmas, the whole Morgan clan met at my sister Melanie's house for dinner. She had the whole basement set up with tables and chairs for everyone with Christmas dishes. I'm always amazed at how many there are of us and of course we were missing Matt and Elasha and their four kids. We always miss them — maybe they can come for a visit next year?! Altogether there are 38 of us. Of course we miss our parents too — who knows, maybe they were there with us!
Of course we did the fondue thing again this year. It's hard if not impossible to break a well-loved tradition. I'm afraid we just eat all night waiting for the new year to come in. Of course the next day we all begin our New Year's Resolutionary Diets! This year we had my brother Mark and Cherry and their kids over. Their four year old had more energy left at midnight than the rest of us all combined!
New Year's Day dawned bright and beautiful. The Morgan group headed to a nearby park and did the sledding thing. I think the younger kids were braver than the older kids. We all stood around at the top for several minutes encouraging each other to go ahead and go! It was actually quite steep and there were several series of "jumps" we were all trying to avoid. Mark's son Parker ended up taking some of those "jumps," caught some air and did a bit of a face plant in the snow. He was mostly ok, except for a fair amount of abrasion to his face. He toughed it out and even took a few more runs! It was a gorgeous day — majestic white mountains against a terrific bright blue sky!
Unfortunately we didn't get to speak with Phillip on Christmas Day because the missionaries in the MTC aren't allowed to call home since there are 2100 of them and only 4 pay phones. But, the previous Sunday, Phillip's Spanish teacher Sister Stubbs called us to say Hi for him and read us a little note that he had given her to read. I thought that was so nice of her to call the families of all her missionaries. She said that Phillip is a great Spanish student and is doing really, really well. At the moment he still awaits his visa...
Loren sent us some pictures of his missionary service in Laredo.