Merry Christmas A Day Late!

 You know the saying, "A day late, a dollar short"?  Well, that's me today.  Late and lots of dollars short! I have been bad about blogging but dealing with blogger and sign ins and such has become a bit of a pain. We'll see how the new year goes with all that.  In the mean time, Christmas day went well here at the Pines. It was a little different this year.  We've always hosted Christmas celebration on Christmas day.  When our grown kiddos had littles it wasn't bad.  Most of the in-laws did Christmas Eve and then we had the next day.  But the littles aren't little any more and a few are married and have their in-law traditions to deal with.  So we sort of had a gathering that came in different times. Phil's girls came early because their other Grandma was having her Christmas that fell into ours.  Our Granddaughter Lexi was ill so it was just Phil and Rae and her sister Aria that made the trek.  They opened gifts and ate some of the snack things I had set out before  heading out on their way.  I was a little miffed that this was happening but couldn't really do anything about it.  It was a quick fun time with them anyway.  Next, most of the crew came at the appointed time with just a few coming in a little later.  I had all the gifts pretty well organized into family boxes and it went well.  I think everyone liked the gifts and no returns are necessary!  We had some fun laughs along the way before heading into the food zone.  Ham and a million sides were served and then we played a game and tried to eat dessert even though we were still full! Ha!  

Gathering around the food!

This is Hazel smiling for YaYa.  She's my daughter-in-law's Grandbaby who's become a favorite visitor here and we are happy to be step "Great Yaya and Great Pawpaw"!  She has a 1yr old little sister, Tatem, but I don't think I have any pics of her from yesterday. 

Granddaughter, Summer with her constant companion, Happy!

Wait, I do have a Tatem pic...standing by her Grandma, Evelyn.  

Jordan with his girlfriend, Brittany and her little girl, Haylee.  It was nice having tiny kiddos again around the Pines!

Driana and her hubby, Jonathan.  Driana is an RN and works at a University Hospital in Cleveland.  I work at University Hospital, Samaritan, here in Ashland and she just starting training doing EGD's and colonoscopies at her facility..hmmm....just like YaYa does down here in Ashland! We had a lot of colon stories to tell each other!  I did a bit better with photo taking this year.  I'm usually pretty busy with food prep, talking to my family, organizing the gifting and such and forget to snap a pic.  Oh well, I will show this one photo that did make me laugh.

This is a bad shot of Evelyn and Sam's back sides but the little girls were excited to look out and see a couple of Santa's reindeer in the back yard.  Yep, three deer showed up and I couldn't resist telling them that the reindeer were visiting to say good-bye for this year and to be reminded to be good for the new year ahead. I think the adults even bought that story! Ha! (no one noticed the "reindeer" had no antlers!) 

Here's a pic of the quiet before the storm as we got the livingroom set up for the family.

I found these green chair covers on line and they fit my yellow chairs to make it look a little more festive.  I sort of like to decorate for Christmas!   Last weekend Jack and I went and helped the Salvation Army by ringing a bell by the red bucket.  Annabelle came with us.  I promised Jack I wouldn't put this on Facebook but I hope he doesn't mind this pic on the blog:

We were laughing at the tiny size of the bell! However, Annabelle looked cute in her sweater.  She loved all the attention from the shoppers. Even though we were indoors, this is the exit for the grocery store and it got pretty cold with the door opening and closing.  We were assigned for an hour but after 45 minutes we noticed poor Annabelle shaking.  It was cold on that tile floor so Jack took her to the car and warmed her up until I finished the last 15min.  I think I'd rather do the Christmas in July bell ringing next year!  On a final, not so jolly moment, I want to mention a sad note from this past week.  We had a boy, 13yrs old, in our Church pass away.  He committed suicide because of being bullied so bad at school. Such a tragedy for this family and his friends at Church.  I think social media is the worst for kids when it to gives access to constant bullying and encouraging suicide.  I don't know what could have been done for this young boy to help him but being vigilant about checking kids phones and hopefully taking action if necessary to stop this.  Prayers go out for his family and his older brothers.  This can be a tough and cruel world for kids.  We certainly had bullying in our day but face to face where you can duke it out, get it over with, and walk away.  Times are different now.  Well, I hope this new year ahead can bring peace to everyone and hope for better things along the way.  Have a safe and happy rest of your holiday season.