Thursday, January 3, 2013

Ball Family Christmas

We celebrated Christmas, just the six of us, on December 23rd this year. It worked out great because my brother & his family went to his in-laws for the day, so we had a free Sunday all the way from morning church until the Candlelight Service in the evening. I cooked a turkey (well, actually a young chicken, because turkeys this time of year are gigantic and expensive), stuffing (which was homemade in the slow cooker!), mashed potatoes, gravy (from the chicken drippings, even! Not from a can or mix!!), cranberry sauce (also homemade and surprisingly simple), broccoli salad (okay, that was from a salad mix. I didn’t feel like chopping broccoli) and rolls (not homemade. I don’t do yeast). It was a feast and it was very tasty and not too hard! I may just make a feast like that again someday.

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We’re all drinking Coke in the wine goblets. I didn’t want you to think I gave my children red wine with ice…

And unfortunately all my holiday tablecloths & placements are packed away, so we had to eat on a bare table. We did get to use Ed’s mom’s China for our meal, though!

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Becca & Elise were excited about finding the wishbone…

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Elise won the pull!

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Then it was time for gifts!

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I made Sarah a scrapbook on Shutterfly of pictures from her XC season. I think she liked it!

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Cowgirl boots for my fancy, horse-loving, drama queens…

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A Lyncs duffel for Bethany, now that she’s in Junior High.

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A new “leather” jacket for Sarah.

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Bellewood Acres Peanut Butter for Ed… (I also got him a toaster oven for the new house!)

No pictures, but Ed gave me two gift certificates…one for etsy.com and one for jessicasprague.com for digital scrapbooking supplies. Supposedly I will be able to get all caught up now…

In the evening we headed to our beautiful Candlelight Service (an earlier post included pictures of the kids singing and Becca singing her solo). Then it was back to my parents’ house for our next day of fun with cousins!

A very happy birthday to my one-year-old niece today! Hopefully we’ll get a chance to sing to you later today!

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