The party at Grandma Wilson's was good. David and Edna are apparently in Arizona, so they didn't come, and Caleen's family almost didn't come. I would have been way sad if they hadn't. I guess Dusty wants to start doing their own thing on Christmas eve. (They do have 5 kids, so it makes sense), but Caleen bargained that they'd come until 9:30.
This party seems to get shorter and shorter. I like to describe it by saying it has phases. Phase one is dinner. Traditional ham and cheesey potatoes. Mmmm. Phase two is the program. This is why it has gotten so short over the years. This used to consist of singing solos or playing various instruments, but as the grandkids have gotten older, we have stopped bothering. We did, however, have Casey play Ode to Joy on the piano, and Elisabeth played Jingle Bells while Riley and Cody sang.
Part two of the program consists of everyone singing various Christmas carols. (We sure don't remember the words to a lot of them anymore!) This year we started off with the fun, secular ones, and then transitioned into the hymns. We always end with Koreen playing Silent Night while the Luke story is read. My mom is the oldest, so she would read it every year. When she passed away, I took over. I'd like to report that I managed not to cry while reading the story this year! (This is the fourth year I've read it... you'd think it wouldn't take that long.) After the story, we all sing Silent Night.
Then it's Phase three! PRESENTS! Typically we go youngest to oldest. In prior years, we would circle around and around, opening one present at a time. A few years back, we wised up and let each person open all their presents at once. This year, we started on the other end - with Grandpa Wilson. So Grandpa and Grandma opened their presents, and Caleen only could stay another 15 minutes. So we let her kids open theirs next. Then they wanted to watch those they brought gifts for open them.... it was a very random order thing, but we all managed to get our presents open.
We were done by 10:30pm (and it pseudo started at 6pm - though I don't think we started eating until about 7pm). That's not too bad considering it used to be about midnight or later.
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