Christmas Eve 2020

The day began with my giving the kids these little Diamond Art prints. (Diamond Painting? Do we even capitalize any of this?) Anyway, whatever they are called (you can see a few of them [uncompleted] below), they were a hit! Anders and Summer tired of them fairly quickly, but Dais, Gold, Pen and Jesse worked on them most of the day. (I kept catching Goldie working on hers in snatches long after she was supposed to have set it aside to finish up some homework or other before all our Christmas festivities began.) And even Mette kept at it for large stretches of time.

They are kind of like a paint-by-numbers thing. Except the pictures are sticky and you use a sort of pen to pick up and place tiny beads in the right spots. It was a good way to give them something a bit different to keep entertained with until our Christmas Eve-ing began in earnest.

Midday, while Starling slept (and Goldie plodded along with getting homework out of the way [between spells of adding beads to her cardinals and berries]), Mike took the rest of the kids off to find a little adventure.

They went to Willard Bay and walked right across the frozen area where boats are launched! It was so novel and they liked it so much (and I was so eager to take pictures myself on all that ice after all the shots Mike texted me) that we all went back again on Christmas. 

It was fascinating hearing the whirring, alien-like, echo rocks made as we threw them across the ice. And eerie hearing the groaning cracks of ice as top layers split in little seems across the surface. And surreal to be standing over deep water. But it also terrified me as I couldn't help but imagine the near-death scenes from every movie ever made where ice-crossing is portrayed. (Plus, I couldn't take any pictures because my camera battery died.) 

Mike told me about ice-truckers who drive semis over frozen lakes in Alaska and Canada. And he showed me charts of how much weight various inches of ice could hold (though at one point it showed how many inches thick the ice would need to be to hold an AT-AT, and do we really know how much those weigh? hmm?). Still, I would probably prefer to not see my children spread out hither and yon over a frozen lake again. But it was quite an adventure!

When Mike was young (I think like 14!) he worked at a little pizza place not far from us. He continued working there after his mission and even for a time early in our marriage. (He was going to school in the mornings working on his Masters degree, working at a translation company in the afternoon, and working weekends and some nights delivering pizzas; all so I could stay home with our first -- and soon second -- little babies.) 

Anyway, that was years and years ago, and it is now the original owner's son who runs the place, so even though we know the family, we were still completely surprised when they stopped by to wish us a Merry Christmas bearing pizza gift cards in their arms! I'd been hoping to keep food preparation low key on Christmas Eve, so that was the perfect thing for us to use for our Christmas Eve dinner (and with such a generous gift, we even ordered an extra pizza with "weird" toppings like peanuts on it just for me). (And here everyone is snacking on crackers and cheese and chips afterwards.)

After dinner we opened sibling gifts (the kids all draw names). This year we just went to the dollar store for everyone to choose out their little gift. Which was a simple and fun way to do it. But then there were a few extra sibling gifts as well (because our older working girls simply couldn't resist). Daisy got a Jane Austen coloring book for Penny and a Bob Ross one for Goldie (as well as a Bob Ross game for them to share). And Goldie got Penny a DVD of Onward (Penny's favorite movie) and a present for Daisy ... that didn't arrive on time. And is still a secret on the way. And then Daisy and Penny went in together on a D-O droid robot for Jesse and Anders. They'd found it at an outlet near us and were so excited about the reduced price and how fun it would be for their brothers that they couldn't resist getting it even though, deal though it was, it was still no cheap price to pay. So they were nearly heartbroken when the boys opened it and it didn't appear to be working (as it couldn't be returned to the outlet and put such a damper on their huge surprise).

Jesse later took it apart and fiddled with it. And I said a quiet prayer (though the further apart he took it, the more certain I was that it would never work). And then, to our astonishment, when Jesse put it back together, it worked! Perfectly! (Everyone always told me, when Jesse was younger and taking apart every single thing in our house, that someday he'd be putting things together and fixing them instead of breaking them. And what a fun thing to see that actually happening!)

After all of the sibling gifting, we did our annual candle-light nativity. This year a host of farm animals joined in, and Penny actually directed it all with a script (usually we just sort of have everyone walk in as we read Luke 2 without saying anything). It creates a lot of mess to clean up before our late-night setting up of Christmas (scarves and stuffed pigs and bathrobes and so on), but it's a peaceful and lovely way to end Christmas Eve (and even though it was incredibly dark and many of these pictures are grainy or blurry, they capture the feel of it all perfectly).

When it was all said and done, the girls set up camp in the open room in the basement, and the boys (who already sleep in the same room) tried to make it a bit more novel by setting up sleeping bags in their room (and Goldie snuck them a bowl of popcorn) and they all went to bed -- and slept horribly. Hahaha. 

And the next post will be ... Christmas morning!