Christmas Fun

We thought it might be a hard Christmas since so many in our family wouldn't be able to be with us—but it turned out to be a good day. Shellie, George, Abby and Caynen and Scott came and stayed for two days, and we had lots of fun. Abby and I had our first cooking experience with Abby on Grandma's cooking chair. We made George's favorite whole wheat pancakes (Grandma Barrett's famous recipe), read from the scriptures, opened gifts, ate lots of good food, and also lots of junk food, and just enjoyed being together. George wanted to make sure we played the infamous Smith Christmas chimes on Christmas Eve, but we didn't have enough people to do a song without George having to play two chimes at once (he's very coordinated in every way, except for chime playing!). We planned to play them when we had the bigger group, but we forgot! Our friends, Ron, Pauline and Sharise let us crash their Christmas tradition of going to a movie on Christmas Day, and we all watched "Marley and Me" together. It was great hearing a few sniffles coming from tough guy Ron sitting behind us. My nephew, David, and his wife, Taylor, were special Christmas angels and volunteered to babysit Abby and Caynen while the rest of us went to the movie. After that we went home and prepared and ate a turkey dinner. We ended up with 12 people there, but we lost two when David and Taylor's baby thought he wanted to come and she went into labor. It turns out the baby was just teasing—he didn't actually come until New Year's Day. We had lots of fun, but we sure missed Mike, Bri, Trent, Garret, Zach, Kenny, Christan, Bailey, Corbin, Drew, Brian and Emily.