Christmas Eve

Whitney as an angel

Every year for several generations, Geraldine's family has been getting together on Christmas Eve to enjoy food and family. One of the traditions, the fishpond, was a tradition her grandparents brought from Norway! This year I volunteered to be in charge of the dinner! I was estimating somewhere between 70-80 people, so it was quite the task. We made barbecue pork, baked potatoes and rolls. Everyone contributed and we had tons of food--there is always worry when you are serving that many people that there won't be enough food, but it always works out. We ate dinner, then the kids put on their costumes to act out the nativity story. We enjoyed some singing and then delved into the desserts while the kids had fun with the fishpond. The only downfall of the night was that Whitney maybe over did it with eating/drinking/playing? and ended the evening by throwing up. Fortunately, it was an isolated incident and though she seemed a little under the weather on Christmas, she wasn't really sick.

Before the dinner we also had the opportunity to see our niece Sariah get baptized. She asked Mike and I to sing a song (I, of course, cried-no surprise). It was a very spiritual baptism and she is such a sweet girl with a strong testimony of the gospel. I loved that because her birthday is Christmas Eve we were able to sing Christmas songs in conjunction with the baptism. The celebration of the birth of our Savior fit perfectly with the celebration of baptism.

Geraldine asked all of us to think about what "gift" we could give the Savior this year.