This year we were so excited to have Alan's sister Diane be able to join us for the Brown Family Christmas! We started the day with our traditional yummy breakfast and then enjoyed sitting around and opening presents. This year seemed to have a couple of themes. A definite BYU theme as Pat had tied BYU fleece blankets for all of us. (My two youngest boys are sporting theirs as robes around the house even though one of them got a new robe for Christmas and the other has poo poohed robes in general.) The other fun theme was family history. Pat and Wally transferred Thirza Brown's (Wally's mother) home movies to DVD for all of us. We had a great time watching never before seen home movies of Wally growing up, along with his siblings, parents, grandparents and other various relatives. It was especially fun to see a "young" Aunt Shirley. Little did I know that Grandma Great and I are kindred spirits that like to run around with a camera!
This year our guest list included some friends of Loren's and Anne's that are here from Canada and didn't have any family to spend Christmas with. Besides them, it was just our little family with Pat and Wally. We had a nice evening, but I am wondering if maybe it isn't time to shake things up a bit for next year by doing something different? I know some of my kids would rebel, but the seed has been planted in my thinking, so we'll see. Of course we missed having Tess with us — this is the fourth Christmas in a row that we have been missing one or two of our missionary children and it looks like we have one more. So maybe Christmas of 2011 we will all be together? What a great prediction! I guess we have to wait and see about that too....
What a relaxing day Christmas is! We see what Santa has brought this year (this particular year a lot of fun new movies to watch), enjoy our traditional breakfast casserole with orange rolls, and then sit around and exchange gifts with each other. But, the best part of these past four Christmas Days is being able to call our missionary children. So, this year we called Tess in Poland. It was so great to be able to hear her voice! She sounds so great and while we know she is a bit homesick, (especially at Christmas) we could tell that this mission experience is a good one for her. It was hard to finally hang up, but now I have Mother's Day to look forward to, right? My Christmas was complete when I knew that she had received her Christmas package from home before the holiday (every missionary mother's worry!) It was a great day that ended by watching one of our new movies and welcoming my sister Melinda and her family who had been traveling all day from Arizona to visit with both families for a week.
For Christmas, Tess sent us a fun box of Polish candy bars, a Polish magnet for the fridge and a CD filled with photos and a little video.
Amazingly enough we were able to get the entire Morgan family together on a Sunday evening for a family Christmas celebration. My brother Matt and Elasha invited us all to their new home where they were actually able to sit all forty of us down to dinner in their kitchen / family room area. What a great house! After dinner we attempted the impossible and assembled the whole group in front of their fireplace for a timed family photo. We thought we should "capture" the moment without making it into too big of a deal, so it was very much a "come as you are" photo. We took several shots and really only had one turn out — but I guess that is how it pretty much works when you have 39 people, most of them children trying to stand still and smile at the camera for a timed flash! Of course we were missing Tess which would put us to forty and Elasha is expecting in March which will bring the new Morgan Family total to 41. I'm sure our parents are happy that we all get together and are trying to stay close — not easy with such a growing group!
This year we just had our own little family fondue party. Phillip was gone to Oregon to visit his girlfriend Nichole, but Loren and Anne came up and we enjoyed the usual fondue fare. Maybe it is because we are all getting older, but for some reason we were all really tired and kind of wanted to go to bed early. Next year I'm going to try taking a long nap that afternoon so I can feel more festive! I guess I just made a New Year's Resolution.