We celebrating Christmas with my dad's side of the family this weekend. It was a fun time. However, as always, there are moments that make it memorable.
One of the nicest things this year was that we got to have my cousin and his family spend Fri and Sat night with us. They live in Indiana and I hadn't had the chance to get to know Kara and KariAnn last year because of Stacey's wedding. So, it was great to have the opportunity to sit in our quiet house (as opposed to G'ma and G'pa's crazy house) and really chat with them. It was just another perk of living in the area!
KariAnn is 12 and loved following Elizabeth around. She kept a close watch on her at G'ma's on Fri night and every time we were at our house. I think she'll make a great babysitter one of these days. E loved her and had a great time showing KariAnn all of her stuff.
We didn't arrive at G'ma and G'pa's until 4ish, and the party was well underway. E needed a nap that day because she was up until like midnight the night before and Jut had an abscessed tooth and also needed some rest. By the time we arrived, the house contained 22 adults and 9 children ranging in ages of 13 to 3 months. I think that poor little Nick was suffering from stimulus overload, but he did pretty well with the clan. The older kids were banished to the garage to play their games...however, Nolan and Ethan (ages 5 and 6) kept the house very noisy all by themselves. Elizabeth was pretty shy at first with all the commotion and people but she warmed up pretty quickly and really was impressed with little Nick.
We had dinner and got ready to play "Yankee Swap" or "Dirty Santa" with our Christmas presents. It was really a pretty boring year...there wasn't very much stealing going on. My present got stolen but I had stolen it from someone else...easy come, easy go. One of the presents was an LED headlamp. Well after the game, Micheal went down to the basement to see how well it worked and found that the septic system was backed up in the basement. So, all the men had to go investigate. Come to find out, they had already worked on it once this week. We knew it was a serious problem when Uncle Duane donned on his coveralls. Well, it was 9:30 and E needed to go to bed, so we headed for home assuming that they could fix the problem.
At 10:30 we got a call that told us that lunch for tomorrow had been moved to Aunt Elaine's. They hadn't been able to fix it. So, after church we headed over to Elaine's. No one was there. So, we ran out to the farm and it was semi-organized chaos. Everyone was packing up all the food, tables and chairs to go to Sheila's house instead. So, we grabbed what we had left at G'ma and G'pa's the night before, and went to Sheila's. As I pulled into her driveway, I looked in the rear view mirror and saw that E had nodded off. She had gotten up at 5:30 that morning. So I pulled back out of the driveway and kept driving for the next hour...not an efficient use of gas, but she needed that nap. Anyways, I picked up Jut from church and went back to the party. We had a great lunch and conversations. Jut and Uncle Duane played backgammon...the kids with Aunt Elaine and Bernadette played apples-to-apples. It was a fun afternoon.
At 3:00 when the party was starting to break up, the men decided it was time to tackle that septic system again. Fun, fun. Long story short, they were unable to fix the problem. They've given G'pa advice about what needs to be done...but we'll see if he takes it or not.
Last year...they blew fuses left and right because of the wacky way the house is wired and this year the septic system stopped working. What does that leave to go wrong for next year???? It is always an adventure!! ;-)
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