Dot Dot Dot

Holdays and Beyond

Wow! It's been busy! I can't believe I haven't blogged for two weeks. Really, it only seems like it's been a week. Well, enough about that....

My family came up to visit for Christmas. They stayed for about a week. We had a great time! It was the first time Lisa and I were responsible for hosting the Christmas celebration. Wow! It was quite a bit of work, but well worth it. I got about six hours of sleep a night for about 5 nights in a row. I wanted to stay up until 2:00 AM with all the night owls, but had to get up at 8:00 AM with Emily.

Within the first day, Emily had everyone's name down cold. In particular, she loved shouting "Grandmommy." My theory about that is Emily loved it because my mom would react with unbridled excitement. So, Emily would say "Grandmommy" and my mom would shriek, so Emily would shriek "Grandmommy" and so on. It made for great family entertainment.

On Thursday--the day before Christmas eve--we baked Christmas sugar cookies and decorated them. This is a longstanding Neumann family tradition. It's something I enjoy doing, although I always think it's going to take less time than it really does.

On Christmas eve, Lisa baked a delicious Italian meal--a longstanding Guido family tradition. We hustled off to the Christmas eve service at church. Then we came back and spent several hours singing Christmas carols. Peter played keyboard and I played guitar until my fingers went numb and stopped working. It was great to slow down the busy season, enjoy the ambiance, and reflect on the meaning of Christmas. Christmas carols have profound lyrics and I'm continually amazed how the authors can pack so much meaning in so few verses.

On Christmas day, the gift exchange was an Emily gift fest with other people thrown in. My mom, Lisa and I went a little nuts with gifts for Emily. We ended up keeping back three presents for Emily because she had so many. She'll like them just as much on her birthday. ;-)

Lisa gave me Mario Party 6, so Christina, Linda, Lisa and I had fun playing the game for hours. All I can say is addictive mini-games...addictive mini-games...addictive mini-games....

My family stayed a couple days after Christmas. We just lounged around, hung out, went on walks, played games, ate good food, and relaxed. I guess it was recuperation for hectic pace until that point.

All-in-all it was great to have my family up for Christmas. Things went swimmingly well. We enjoyed hosting them for a memorable Christmas celebration.

Posted by enigma at December 29, 2004 08:25 PM