Dec. 25, Christmas

Oh my goodness, what a day!! I need to write it down lest I forget. Elder Whiting started out very early this morning. He had to be to the Larsons by 6 a.m. They have this tradition where they ask someone in the ward to be their early morning Santa, (usually the missionaries.) Everyone in the family hides in the frontroom and watches Santa bring in all of the gifts. So Elder Whiting carried in three bags of gifts and then sat down and rested and talked about how tired he was from going all around the world. He talks to himself for a while and then tells the "room" that he had better get on his way so that he can get to the rest of the boys and girls. It is such a cute little tradition, and he really enjoyed it.

Last night, (Christmas Eve,) at 9:30 Laura called to ask if we had received the package yet. She had been calling all day to make sure that we actually received it when they said they would deliver it. Since it wasn't here, she tracked it and found out it was enroute somewhere here in Sherman. To make a long story short, we called them with the tracking number and they found it sitting right there on their desk. They had actually rescheduled it to deliver on Dec. 26. If we wanted it we needed to go and pick it up. So we stopped everything and went to pick it up at 9:30 p.m. We had to stop at the Larsons anyway, so it was not a big deal.

Anyway this morning when we got to see what it was, were we ever glad we had picked it up! It was a DVD of the whole family that Laura and Jen and I don't know who else had put together as a Christmas present for us. We sat here and watched it on the computer and laughed and cried and went through the whole gamet of emotions. We just loved it. Our Christmas would not have been the same without it.

This has been a different Christmas without family, but it also has been a peaceful and spiritual one too. We have enjoyed each other and have talked to most of the family. We are so grateful that Alyson and Trevor had Laura and ALysa and Reed over. They looked like they were having an enjoyable time together too, when we talked to them on the web cam.

The Larsons brought us a yummy dinner over of Turkey, stuffing, rolls, mashed potatoes and gray and three different kinds of pie. It was so darn good. I am happy that we were able to rest today as I feel a little bit like I am getting the flu today. I feel a sore throat and achy joints coming on. Suzette was able to have her kids come back over today too. I am happy that she could have them and not have to do Christmas alone. That is awfully hard! Besides that they have an enormous amount of snow in that area. That is a lot to shovel alone.