A Wonderful Family Celebration

With all the family dynamics going on we decided to hold our family celebration tonight.  Niki has to work Christmas Eve, Vicky’s family was celebrating Christmas Day—you know how it is, so tonight was our night.  Before we got here the powers that be decided to have a progressive dinner.  It was so much fun!

We started with appetizers at Mom’s followed by salads at Niki and Eric’s.  Danny and Ann hosted the main course and Ross and Vicky hosted the desserts.  After all that food we all waddled back to our respective homes!  Don’t Vicky’s pies look great—they were, especially the pumpkin!!

We exchanged little small gifts at each home, many of the gifts were homemade—chex party mix, jellies, cookies.  The guys received flashlights, tool kits and other guys things.  The ladies got socks, soaps and other girly things.  We had so much fun—none of the gifts were expensive but meant so much—I loved it! 

We even received presents all the way from Holland—Mom and Daddy hosted an exchange student many years ago who became part of our family.  Her family in Holland also became part of ours—in 2008 when Michael and I were here in Arkansas for Christmas, the Holland gang of eight joined us.  The exchange student, Maaike and her husband Leon have a new baby Rosa—the three of them made an Arkansas trip this last spring to introduce Rosa to her Arkansas family.  They sent “kanjers”, a caramel cookie very popular in Holland and Dutch Monopoly games with chocolate game pieces.  Of course all the writing on the game board and pieces is Dutch!

I spoke with Karon yesterday—Karon is a friend of Ellie’s and grew up here in Sheridan.  She and her husband have recently gone from full timing back to their sticks and brick home in Sheridan.  We met for lunch today and had one of those “been friends forever” kind of chats.  Found out we know lots of people in common of course—Sheridan isn’t that big of a town.  (Sorry, I tried to post links to Ellie and Karon’s blog and my internet connection is just too slow).  I was supposed to have taken Ellie’s quilt with me to show Karon, got it out of the cupboard and left it on the bed!!!  GRRR!!  I will try to stop back by Karon and Dan’s sometime this weekend to show her the quilt.  I got to meet KD, their schnauzer today, too.

It was a fabulous day in the Christmas season!