We had Christmas in stages this year.

We met up Tuesday night with two of my sisters who live about 40 minutes away at a Mexican restaurant between our locations.

Jason left Christmas Eve afternoon to spend a few days with his fiancee and her family, so we opened his presents to and from us as well as our stockings earlier that day.

Christmas morning we brought Grandma over. While I finished up a few things, Jesse played his piano recital piece, “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.”

(All of these picture, by the way, were taken by Jeremy except the one later on of him.)

Then Jim read the Christmas story.

Then we opened presents. See that big box right in front? It’s mine. 🙂

I had thought these were really neat and been wanting one, but thought they were way too expensive. But my husband found a great deal on one.

Grandma had a great time.

Living alone and then with a daughter who did not want to celebrate Christmas at all, I think it was a nice change for her to experience a family Christmas again.

We did have a little bit of frustration, though…We used to open one gift at a time while everyone watched and then we talked about it, but that took all morning, so now we kind of go by rounds. Jesse passes out a present to everyone, and we each open that one gift at the same time before we move on, and that gives us a chance to explain or tell the story behind the gift. Grandma, at this stage, can’t seem to wait for anything (I’m wondering if this is true for others elderly parents with some degree of dementia?), so she would be wanting help with her present while Jim was trying to talk to one of the boys about theirs — no waiting patiently in between. But overall that was a relatively minor blip in the day though it was frustrating at the time.

Jim here is opening a globe from Jeremy with constellations on it (astronomy is one of Jim’s interests, plus he likes interesting things on his desk).

Jesse playing one of his new DS games:

For the past several years I have made these for Christmas breakfast:

Sister Shubert’s (or Schubert?) sausage wraps and cinnamon rolls. In the frozen section of the grocery store, only 15 minutes or so in the oven. In the past the boys didn’t want to have breakfast first, but I have low blood sugar and couldn’t wait til mid-morning, so these were a nice compromise. I could heat them up before we got started, and then people could wander in and out of the kitchen as desired. I also opened a can of sliced apples and added sugar and cinnamon and warmed them up.

Jeremy waiting for Christmas dinner…

Which usually consists of a spiral-sliced brown sugar glazed ham that our local grocery store always has on sale for Christmas, plus Cheesy Potatoes, Vegetable Medley, and brown and serve rolls. Later on we had pumpkin pie and apple pie.

We took Grandma home after the pies, then crashed for the rest of the day. I heated up a plate of leftovers for dinner while Jim and Jeremy made ham sandwiches and Jesse ate leftover Mexican food.

Then Friday we all pitched in for a cleaning marathon. One of Jim’s nephews with his wife and five children, who used to live near Grandma in ID but moved to TN, were coming up for a surprise visit to Grandma. They arrived late in the afternoon while Jim was out picking up Grandma.

Surprise!

They just stayed over one night, but we had an enjoyable visit. It was good to catch up with them. Their kids range in age from 4 to 12, and I don’t think I had seen them since the oldest was about 4. It had been a long time since we had young kids in the house, and I was expecting a lot of noise and commotion. but they were very quiet and exceptionally well-behaved.

After they left on Saturday we again crashed except for laundry and had pizza for dinner. It was nice to have the house all clean! Usually it takes a few days after Christmas to get things in order.

Yesterday was a fairly normal Sunday. Jason gets back this afternoon, and I have an inkling he’ll bring a couple more presents with him. We’ll probably take the tree down later this week, then it will be “back to normal.” Though in many ways getting back into routine is nice, I often miss the Christmas festivities, lights, gatherings, etc.

Updated to add: I saw after I posted this that 5 Minutes For Moms was hosting a Christmas Photo Carnival, so I linked this post to that.

I mentioned in an earlier post about decorating the Christmas tree that “the island of misfit ornaments” was the designation my oldest son gave to some of our ornaments that were not quite picture perfect. Some of them got broken or misshapen over the years and we’ve just never gotten around to fixing them — I think when we get them out I’ll fix them some time during the season, and then when that doesn’t happen I think I’ll get to them before next year, but somehow I never throw them away. Others of them are just a little offbeat. But as we unpack the ornaments every year and ooh and ah over the pretty ones and remember the stories and significance behind several of them, we have a lot of fun with the “misfits” as well. I thought I’d show you some of them. I’ll forewarn you, though, that with teen/young adult boys, our sense of humor is a little warped.

This one used to be a little Nativity ornament.

We don’t hang this one any more. One year the roof broke off, and it looks like we lost Mary, or at least her head, along the way. My kids found this at the bottom of the box and were asking about it (I guess it has been so long since it was whole that they didn’t even remember it). As I was telling them what it used to be, Jeremy, my oldest, said it looked more like Abraham getting ready to sacrifice Isaac…

I mentioned in that earlier post that there was one angel whose head got separated from its body somehow, and the boys have done strange things with it every year since. One year they just hung the head as an ornament and placed another ornament that was a little hat on top of it. This is where it ended up this year:

I told them they reminded me of Sid on Toy Story.

These were little wax candle ornaments that we got our first Christmas together.

The brown-haired boy represented Jim, and the blond girl represented me. But one year they got a little melted up in the attic. I couldn’t even get them out of the plastic bags because they were stuck. I don’t know why I haven’t thrown them away. I put all my Christmas candles in a box in a storage closest now so they don’t melt any more up in the attic, and I keep these in with them.

I think one of the boys got this little misshapen bear at a school or Sunday School exchange. I don’t know what happened to him.

But they seem to have special affection for him.

Someone gave us this one year. Jason called her the octopus angel.

She looks a little depressed to me.

This was a little crystal angel whose lower end keeps getting broken off in pieces even though it is kept in its own little box.

This is what Jeremy did with it this year.

For those of you familiar with the BJU Unusual films, their logo was the angel flying with the video camera — this reminds me of that.

This is something Jesse made when he was little.

We have several kid-made ornaments like that that have their place of honor.

And there is nothing wrong with this one…I’ve just always thought it was a little strange.

Doesn’t every tree need a Hershey’s Kiss ornament?

Finally, I also told in that post about how we have a stray hook on the ceiling that the previous owners had, I think, a hanging lamp on. We’ve just never taken it out, and one year one of the boys put one of our snowflake ornaments on it. I fussed about it the first year, and then it became kind of a game every year to get it up there before I could say anything. I’ve accepted it now as one of our unique traditions.

You can also see in that picture that they put a little crown ornament I got on clearance last year on our angel tree topper.

I’ve always preferred that our tree be a meaningful family-oriented tree rather than a perfect decorator tree, but I’ll have to admit there have been some years I wished some of these remained in the box, or after everyone was done decorating I moved them to a less conspicuous place on the tree. But now I’ve pretty much embraced them as part of the fun of our particular tree decorations.

Do you have any offbeat or “misfit” ornaments?