We had Christmas at the lake house at Lake Tapps, WA with the entire family. This was our biggest Brown family gathering EVER, because baby Chase was born while Kyle was on his mission, so Chase plus Kyle plus the rest of us = 15 people! Family time is precious. Christmas is HAPPY.
Christmas 2013 highlights:
- My brother Kyle got back from his 2-year mission in Uruguay a few days before Christmas. Love him.
- It was the first time all of my siblings and parents (my whole family) has been together for Christmas in 6 years!
- Mom’s homemade everything, especially the butter pecan cookies.
- Kyle is home!
- Dani’s gourmet-ness.
- Em’s yummy contributions to the snackables. My sisters make it look easy.
- We all saw Kyle give his RM talk in church.
- It was the first time that all of Mel’s siblings together at the same time watched her play a high school basketball game.
- We had our first-ever family testimony meeting: powerful. Tears all around (all but 3 of us are weepers—ahem, Mom, Brad, and Jeff). Let’s just say my eyelids took a whole 24 hours to return to their normal, non-puffy state. Family love plus the gospel equals JOY. And a few gallons of salt water.
- Kyle is home!
- Family game time: Ticket to Ride via bluetooth on iPads and What’s Yours Like? were the favorites of the week. We love to play and bash and laugh.
- HUGS!
- KYLE!!
The Kyle:
I was enjoying Kyle’s presence so much that I neglected to get a picture with me and him together. But there he is. Returned from the southern land of Montevideo. Reunited with his family, a basketball, and an iPhone. I love my brother!
Was this really 20 years ago?
The basketball game:
Go Newport! Chase is a fan.
The Sunday:
The lake house is an hour from my parents’ ward and church was at 9am, so we had to get moving in the morning. We ended up driving the old Civic loaded with 3 boys. They were so funny and giggly the whole ride.
Welcome home to Kyle! All 5 Brown kids reunited.
Kyle and all 4 nephs, 1 niece.
The Sunday afternoon graham-gingerbread house extravaganza:
The kids mostly ate their decorations.
Picasa collages are limited. Pardon the bad cropping.
Most of us with our creations.
Impromptu sister beauty parlor:
I love my beautiful sisters and daughter. Em curled all of our hair one afternoon. I was pleased to have enough hair for her to curl. I narrowly escaped getting mascara’d up—poor Rose grabbed the hot curling iron and burned her little finger. She managed to pull out a grin for our curly sister picture anyways. As long as her finger was pressed onto my cold ice water bottle, she was calm.
ELF YOURSELF:
I did this craft at home last year, and it cracked me up. This year I brought pictures, paper, and accessories to the gathering so everyone could elf themselves for the Christmas tree. Mel made Dad into Santa and the wives elfed their husbands/kids. Jeff did make one in about 30 seconds (creepy cotton ball button-eyed cross), but I opted to make another more…whimsical elf for him later.
I made Jay into Legolas, aka, Jaygolas. Jeff got a sparkly beret, in keeping with his Francois image.
Graceful ice skater-Mom and Missionelf Kyle
Wrapped present Dani and Rudolph Brad. Ha! My Mom didn’t bring her Christmas tree decorations to the lake house, so the tree was in need of some love. It was much happier with our family of elves and Kyle’s Uruguay scarf hung on its boughs.
A brief interruption for the lowlights/bloopers of the week:
Travel--
The Broadbents got STUCK in the Salt Lake City airport ALL NIGHT due to a winter storm and maxed out crews. The airline kept loading them on to planes and then unloading them again throughout the night. They finally arrived in Seattle after 4am Friday morning. They were such troopers to come all the way to Washington from Missouri at Christmastime.
Especially this guy.
We didn’t get stuck anywhere, but Jeff did have to drive through the Snoqualmie Pass in the dark while it poured rain/slush. I took this picture of the GPS on the van because it seemed so silly to have a fancy map when there is really only one road between Yakima and Ellensburg. We actually needed the GPS once we got back into civilization on the other side of the mountains, but for the first half it was amusingly superfluous.
Bacon--
Mom baked us a pile of bacon in the oven one morning and forgot to take out one of the sheets. We all kept saying how STRONG that bacon was because the whole entire 6,000+ square feet of the house was drenched in bacony blah-smell for hours after breakfast. Mom suddenly recollected the last pan and we banished the bacon-crusted foil outside to the rainy porch. Bacon briquettes.
My cold—I brought a head cold with me and it very nearly stole my voice. It did cause me to use nearly an entire box of tissues during the 5 day visit. Jay and Rose caught it from me on Christmas, poor kids. But thankfully the Christmas magic pulled them through without too much discomfort.
Sleep--Rose did not take a single nap while we were there, AND the kids had at least 4 super-late nights. Poor little Rose was having a hard time keeping up with the older boys by the end. She turned weepy and snuggly. Once again, Christmas magic smoothed out the rough edges of the sleep-deprived children.
Ok, that’s all. Even though they did little to affect the festivities, I had to insert these lower points. I didn’t want them to be first or last, so I cushioned them in the middle of all the beautiful family felicity. Now, back to the good stuff!
Christmas Eve:
The stockings were hung on the bannister with care…and masking tape.
Our traditional turkey soup and cranberry muffin Christmas Eve dinner. Mom made something close to 42 cranberry muffins for this crowd—I brought my muffin tins to help it happen. Photo credit to Steve, 6 year old camera master.
Excitement has its many faces.
Grama Meri provided the glow sticks.
The stockings were stuffed and the presents piled up. Seriously, 15 people exchanging gifts sure makes a heap. A sparkly, festive heap, but still a heap nonetheless.
We read Luke 2 and talked and then went to bed.
Christmas Morning:
The kids woke up at 6am on Christmas and soon after, Rose paraded into our room singing Jingle Bells at the top of her lungs, over and over. That was kind of how I always thought I would like to be awoken as a MOM on Christmas morning, so I soaked in her singing. The boys joined her and we had quite the fiesta de Navidad in our room for a while there.
Waiting for Grampa Charley to turn on Jingle Bells so they can…
Stockings are my favorite part of Christmas, so I stuffed Jay’s and Rose’s full. I nailed it on picking out gifts for my kids this year—I have to say—because after each one was opened, I could tell that they would be satisfied if we stopped right there.
On to the presents! Our tradition is to go in turns from youngest to oldest. On your turn, you give a gift from yourself to someone else. I wish there was an easier, less-pronoun-ey way to describe that, but none occurs to me at the moment. When the presents are coordinating, like Mel’s gifts to her sobrinos, we often give ‘em all at once…
Well, our gift-giving one by one works great when there are 7-8 people, but with twice that number the kids got worn out before all the gifts had been given. My present plan for my kids was simple and modest, I thought. They each had: a book, a gift from each other, a “main gift” from us parents, and one other. There were two gifts for them to share as well. That seemed perfect to me! But around 10am, Jeff and I slid one of the “to share” packages out and stashed it away for Rose’s birthday (February). The kids were so happy with the presents that they had already opened that they wanted to play instead of open the rest. By all means!
Princesses for Rose—she has only seen Beauty and the Beast and Tangled so far (we’ve read the other fairy tales plenty), but she loves asserting her femininity in the face of Jay’s Star Wars Ninja Turtles Super Hero HiiiiYA macho-ness, and princesses are effective.
Legos! Duplos! Fisher Price Little People from the 80’s! I found most of Rose’s gifts on eBay. There’s no school like the old school. I had that exact same yellow Little People house when I was little, and was completely stoked to find it on eBay a few months ago. It came with a giant bag of little people and accessories. Rose is stocked, and I love playing with her.
This girl means business. My sister Em made Rose her first tutu. It is frilly enough to fulfill Rose’s wildest dreams of GIRLY. The Fluff! The matching bow! Jay’s old shark PJ shirt! That lower lip! Our Rose.
As I mentioned a few months ago, Jeff and I got a treadmill back in October for our Christmas gift to each other. But how could either of us enter Christmas Day without a small something wrapped up to give each other? About a week and a half before Christmas, I had a splendid idea for Jeff’s gift. I hesitated for a few days because I didn’t know if I could finish it in time for Christmas, but I eventually threw caution to the winds and jumped in face first. It stung and I nearly drowned, but at the end of 4 days it was done.
I got out my old journals and pulled up some old emails and typed up a 106 page Microsoft Word document, chronologically tracking our courtship and engagement from first date all the way to the temple. That’s 11 months of journal entries and emails. I copied and pasted the emails so I only ended up typing around 70 of the 106 pages, but I thought that was still rather a lot to do in 3.5 days. Carpal tunnel syndrome was imminent when I finally clicked “order book.” I expedited the book straight to the lake house and anxiously awaited its arrival. It came on December 23rd, in plenty of time. And it is awesome! Jeff and I are both so glad to have our beginnings, written in primary sources (any historian’s dream!) captured and bound between two covers. The book printed out to be 198 pages and it made me feel like a real author. My first novel WOULD be a romance, ha. That was one of my top two favorite gifts I gave this year.
My other fave was the book I made for my parents:
I think the phrase I’m looking for here is…nailed it!
I could barely contain my excitement while Dad was removing the wrapping paper. Thank you, Em for capturing their reaction.
Four years ago for my parents’ Christmas present I scanned all of our old family photos and put them on a CD. Off and on over the past two years, I’ve been working on a photo book of all our old pre-digital camera family scans: 1983-2005. I finished it this fall and printed it out, effectively reducing a 3-foot tall pile of old, sagging/broken photo albums into a single sleek, 328 page volume. Ideally I would’ve given each of my four siblings this same book, but 328 page photo books are a tad pricey, so I just got the one for my parents. It was hard to let it go, but 0h-so-WONDERFUL! It felt supreme to give my parents such a meaningful, appreciated present. That’s the best thing kids can give their parents anyways, right? Memories—happy ones.
My 6’1’’ Husband, a shorty.
Rose picked me out a pair of sunglasses—Jeff gave her free reign and let her choose them all on her own. They’re actually pretty comfy.
Love! kids! on! Christmas!
The Lake:
Lake Tapps is a reservoir that is drained down a few feet during the winter. Nobody boats on it in the wintertime, and it practically turned into a wildlife preserve. The lake house is on its own mini peninsula, so we had such delicious, idyllic views of glassy water dotted with ducks, geese, and even a family of four swans. It was a very tranquil atmosphere, even if the geese like to sneak onto the lawn and leave mounds of poop every few inches.
Christmas Eve--
A bald eagle lives somewhere near the lake house. He was just sitting there imperiously on this snag on Christmas Eve, right off shore. My camera was at full zoom to get him this close.
Then he took off and we watched him soar and flap majestically across the wide sky. Another morning, he swooped the house through the mist. He was only like 20 feet away from our windows! I love eagles, and not just because of Gandalf.
Sunset on Christmas Day--
Could those three ducks been any more artistically obliging? I think not.
Laaaa! Then sings my soul.
Snappies:
The Schapps (Dani’s parents) sent an artistic fruit sleigh. Who knew chocolate covered pineapple tastes so good?
Unk!
Yeah, these kids didn’t get nearly enough sleep. Par-tay in the cousin room!
Even though I know Brad and Dani love us, I can’t help but caption this one: “so…many…loud…kids!”
Starting him young.
Where was I for this one?
Every time I add a new picture to this post, I’m anxious that the blog program is going to inform me that there are too many pictures and refuse to let me go any further. It’s no small task to sift through 250 pictures and pick the blog-worthies out of the bunch.
The Family:
Christmas Day, 2013
Already my heart warms at the memories.