Christmas Morning 2019

Giving Jeff and family time for their traditional Christmas Story reading and their family gifts, we arrived at their house at about 9am. Mark went with us and we visited a while, but finally they gathered us all for family gift exchanges.

Ashleigh presented to Grandma and Granddad a beautiful atlas of the middle east, where she spent last summer. We are still learning about the middle east, and this is a nice learning tool.

We appreciated the gifts and the visiting. Most of Rod's nicer shirts have come as gifts from Jeff and Darla.

The most fun for us is to watch Elyse, Jordan and Ashleigh open their gifts, so we were about to get on with that.

This is a great fun setting, getting the girls down in the floor to open gifts. They are looking at some gifts that Grandma had put in colorful tote bags.

With all this activity on the floor, it was almost inevitable that a wrestling match of some kind would occur.

It was actually a lot of fun, particularly in view of the fact that with the older two on the campuses in New Orleans, they don't get together that much any more. But in the middle of the romp, Ashleigh's and Jordan's hair got tangled together, perhaps from earrings ... who knows. So it was not only wrestling, it was untangling also!

Uncle Mark has made generous cash gifts to his three favorite nieces for several years, and we were pleased that he could be here with us to see them receive them for the first time.

Besides all the thankyous and hugs, I believe the eyes have it here as an expression of thanks to Uncle Mark for the gifts.

Jeff and Mark, Darla, Grandma and Granddad thoroughly enjoyed the activity and the scene of opening gifts and just being playful with one another. It was a blessed time.

These girls are full of surprises! Asked what she wanted for Christmas, Ashleigh selected these heavy hiking boots! It would have been less surprising summer-before-last when she was headed for Grizzly Ridge in Alaska, and actually hiked to mountain peaks. But it shouldn't surprise us for a young lady who played on the women's rugby team and took ballet during the same university term!

Before we ended our Christmas morning celebration, we certainly wanted some pictures of Jeff and the family. It was wonderful to be able to get together with them.

We had to get a picture of Elyse, Jordan and Ashleigh by the tree. The morning had been great fun with them.

I guess it was good to get a picture of Jeff , Rod and Mark by the tree, but we just about covered up the tree.

This finished our delightful celebration with Jeff and family for the morning, and we prepared to go over to Judy Moyle's for our larger gathering with the whole Moyle family.