Our Christmas tree with presents on Christmas morning. Notice my stocking is stuffed but Mary’s is empty – she had a poor excuse for a Santa getting her presents. The elders came over and spent some time with us. We had party poppers for them – it took some practice to get them to give a good pop. Elder Maremela had fun practicing.
Although most of them had been eating at member’s houses all day long, some of them still found room for a little more food. The chocolate cake and ice cream all disappeared. Having the elders visit made our Christmas. They bring with them a special spirit – even when they are relaxed and eating. They are our temporary sons who will not forget.
25 December 2009 – Friday
It was an unusual Christmas for us. First Mary managed to catch a cold that causes her to cough often and sound strange. To add to that she did something to her right hip that only hurts when she moves – like walk, sit, get up, go to bed, and other things like that. This did not stop her from making a ton of potato salad and a great looking chocolate bunt cake for dinner with the elders later in the day.
We opened our presents – she did much better in getting gifts for me than I did for her, but I tried to make up with quality over quantity. That is my defense anyways. It is the first Christmas that we basically spent alone since we were married. Even in Indonesia there were branch Christmas Parties on the 25th to go to and then dinner at the mission home. But today we basically just sat around and enjoyed the day – because of her problems Mary thought this was a great idea.
In the evening we called and talked all our children except Tom and most of our grandchildren. The elders started arriving about 6:30 but most of them had been fed so often during the day they were not really hungry. However as the night went on they ate a lot of the meat we bought for sandwiches and all of the cake. Potato salad was not a great success – at least they did not eat much.
Elder Wengert was the only one who used our Vonage phone to call home. His family was going to call to his cell but it was having some problems so he had a great time talking on ours. We pushed the last elder out the door at about 9:15 which meant they had to hurry to get home by 9:30. They all made it safely.
It was a quiet but enjoyable Christmas for us.