Christmas Eve to Christmas Morning

It's 7:00 am Christmas morning, and I have more time on my hands than I had been expecting. My kids have been awake for over a half an hour and haven't even mentioned Santa Claus. So we're off to a great start.

Last night, we had a wonderful Christmas Eve barbecue. The Smiths (the office couple), the Davenports (friends of Bob and Delsa's that are serving a mission here), Elder Jones (one half of a CES couple that is here--his wife wasn't feeling well), Judy and Phil Howes (he's in the mission presidency) as well as their son and his fiance, the three office elders, and two assistants all came. Dinner was great (hamburgers, some amazing baked beans, fruit, a cabbage salad, and an angel food cake imported from Melbourne).

After dinner, Mason was in charge of teaching a lesson. He kept letting Ryan and I know he had it under control. He ended up just reading the entire Luke 2 Christmas story, followed by the scriptures about the wise men. He did read it fast, and was easy to understand, and most importantly had drawn stick-figure illustrations to enhance the story.

After him, Phil Howes told a story about a memorable Christmas Eve on his mission where he basically had to spend most of the night sleeping in a taxi in Peru. His son and fiance followed that up with a duet of "Away in a Manger." They did all three verses.

After they were done, and everyone complemented them, Katie took her chance to say (loudly), "That was LONG. It was like an HOUR."

To her credit, Katie was only looking forward to one thing: opening a gift the office elders and assistants had bought for her (they had one for Mason and Andrew as well). She had to sit through us singing one verse of every single Christmas hymn in the hymnbook, and then she got her chance.

After sitting through many meals with us, the missionaries were very familiar with our kids. I hadn't really thought too much about what they might have gotten for the kids, and was almost as surprised as they were when they opened their gifts and they each had received two packages of Pokemon cards. They were in heaven. Kids have a hard time faking it when they don't like something (like Katie telling the couple their song was long), but they are also very good about letting you know when they really do like something. Andrew also loved his gift, a cute stuffed dog. He kept shaking it and saying "Woof woof" at them and giving it lots of kisses. Well, I think he was actually biting it's nose, but it still looked cute.

Ryan went and put them to bed, but played one game with them with their new cards, as there would be no sleep if he didn't. The rest of us started a game of church celebrity. After the first round we had to take out about 5 Moroni's and a couple Teancums and Brother of Jareds. They were pretty popular. President Hinckley? Not even once, although both his counselors got in. Delsa and Bob added in obscure church history figures just to spice it up. Garrett, Bob and I ended up on the same team, and the scores for the two teams reflected our Celebrity prowess. Delsa showed a competetive side that probably hadn't come out for quite a while (say...a year and a half?), but quickly reined it in.

I'll try to recreate one of the funniest moments, although I won't do it justice. Judy was up, and we were in the only-one-word-clue round. She was doing great, and got to one and gave the clue "dead." If you're only going to have one word to choose from, and you're working with scripture and church history people, that didn't seem like it would narrow it down. But just as I was thinking her Celebrity skills weren't quite as sharp as I had thought, her husband said "Lehi", and he was right. After the round, we were all so curious how he had gotten "Lehi" from "dead". It turns out what she had actually said (in her Australian accent) was "dad", which her Australian husband understood perfectly.

After we had finished the game, the missionaries needed to move all of the Christmas packages from the office to the church (the mission home and mission office are right across the parking lot from the church). So we all went to help and had a great time setting up the packages for the Christmas party the next day. We felt like Santa's helpers delivering all of the gifts. Katie and Mason are going help hand them out at the party, which I'm sure they will love.

We went back to the mission home, stayed up a little longer talking, and then went to bed. When the kids woke up this morning, the only thing they remembered were the Pokemon cards from the day before. Santa who? They finally did remember that it was Christmas and have opened their stockings. So I guess Christmas has officially started.

I made cinnamon rolls for breakfast and Delsa did the make ahead breakfast. There isn't any normal bacon here (it's more like Canadian bacon), so she has to use bacon-in-a-bottle. It's just real American-style bacon bits in a small jar. We go through it fast. Then some time before 10:30, I have to go get 15 pounds of dry ice so that we can make enough root beer for 100 people (they don't sell root beer in Australia, except for at the Asian market). The previous mission president and his wife must have liked root beer, because there were 4 bottles of extract on the shelf when Bob and Delsa got here. Since we're having hot dogs and chips for lunch, root beer sounded like it would be great, so I found a place where we can buy dry ice on Christmas day. I've never actually made root beer with dry ice, but I've had it before and remember it being really good. Hopefully I don't blow up the church in my attempts.