HoHoHo

Merry Christmas everyone! We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of the Wisconsin Gartners and those crazy Lake Arrowhead people! My parents arrived at noon yesterday in the midst of some light freezing rain. That didn't stop us from enjoying lunch at Steak n Shake! Last night we made dinner and entertained our good friends, John and Betty. What a fun night of catching up.

Today we will be cooking, making as many dishes ahead as we can, so we can just enjoy Christmas day without too much fuss. We still have to make the last minute wine run. Ugh - you know the stores will be packed! Don will finish setting up Dramea's room, otherwise the house is ready to receive the kids.

We're all looking forward to Linda, Crystal, Cheyenne and Austin arriving Friday night. Then it will get loud and crazy and fun, fun, fun!!! And we hope Linda's fruit cake makes it here. Yum.

Have a blessed Christmas!

Not-so-newly wed game

We had a great time yesterday at the all-church party last night, despite fears that the freezing rain might start before the party ended (it held off until we were home). Everyone brought finger foods and goodies and a wrapped gift for the gift exchange. We were encouraged to re-gift or bring some item we'd like to banish from our homes. Don took this quite literally and had a good time putting together a small gift box containing an old can of Sterno, one of the those clicker fire starters, an old nail clipper, and an old can of turmeric (which no one knew what it was). It was so weird I figured it might be the hit of the party, but no, there were worse ones like the odd reindeer stool (or perhaps it was a small table - hard to tell). The strange feature of this was that the head appeared to be detached and moved to the side of one of the legs. It had a cute Disney kind of face, but still..... People were actually clammering for that! This was not your typical gift exchange, nope, being a church function of course we employed the old "rob your neighbor" strategy and laughed ourselves silly. Then, just to add to the confusion, periodically we were instructed to pass our current gift to the left 5 times or trade with the person on your right.

Just as we were finishing eating, Wade (our preacher) announced that the following couples needed to come forward and the first names he called were Don and Jeanette. Oh no! We were one of the couples chosen for the Newlywed Game (and we generally stink at this, despite 36 years of marriage). Well, we started out with a bang and were soon ahead of the other couples by a healthy margin, then we switched places and quickly went downhill. Apparently I can read Don's mind much better than he can read mine. So we lost by 30 points.
I came home with a sore throat from so much laughing. A very jolly evening.