Simonds Family Inc.: Christmas

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Christmas

So I'm a little late with this post, but here is our Christmas Eve, Morning and Day:

We spent Christmas Eve at my mom's house with her and my two brothers, Aaron and Jacob. I think there were more presents this year under our Christmas tree than ever. Now, I think a lot of that had to do with one little man but to me it also represents some else: This year I believe was the first that everyone got presents for everyone else, individual efforts worked to form a collective whole 'greater' than had ever been achieved by a fewer number of people. It just showed and reminded me that the individual efforts within families are so important to the collective whole. So to me, all those gifts were not just nice things but a manifestation of a family working together in the interests of each other.

Henry wasn't exactly sure what was going on but enjoyed getting into his and everyone else's presents, especially Grammy's for some reason. He got a lot of nice things from everyone but I think his favorites are the Muno doll (the orange thing with one eye in the picture), the soccer ball from Uncle Jacob and the table Grammy got him- he loves pushing it around the room, silly kiddo. One thing Henry got that I really like is the toy chest from Uncle Aaron! The neat freak inside of me is very happy to have one now!

Oh I also forgot to mention our 'little' feast before we opened presents. We started the tradition last year of having mexican food for Christmas Eve dinner. My mom made chicken toquitos, enchiladas, spanish rice and beans. We also got tamales from one of the local places-Lolas. Aaron made a ton of salsas, some really good sauce stuff and guacamole. I guess the cooking gene went from my mom to Aaron instead of me. Poor Johann =)

Aaron working his magic

Christmas Morning we woke up and headed to Riverside to spend the day with Johann's family. Natalie and Bryan (Johann's sister and Brother-in-law) we there too which was nice. We opened gifts and had fun joking around. Everyone kept saying, "It's a sweater" which I guess if from the Three Amigos. I think I should probably see it before next Christmas! One of the gifts that was really special is a book of remembrance put together by Johann's mom with the help of his brothers Derek and Kaleb. Johann and Natalie each got one. It has all the genealogy from Johann's mom's side of the family as well as pictures and other significant records. It's incredible how she was able to put that all together and it is one special gift!
We spent the rest of the day playing games and talking. It was a really great Christmas!