Christmas Trip to Pearl River

December 21, 2021

Brenda and Rod headed out early on Tuesday, December 21, to drive to Pearl River, LA for our Christmas visit. We were planning to attend Elyse's soccer game, but she texted us along the way to tell us that the game had been canceled. We went to their home and found Elyse.

Since the game was canceled, Darla had scheduled the girls for a practice and conditioning session. After checking into our motel, we dropped by the school to see them practice. Darla is the coach, and she and Elyse are the right two in the picture.

December 22, 2021

Visit to Radio Road property to see progress

Jeff and Rod had gone over to the Radio Road property in the early afternoon. Mark had driven down and Darla & Jordan brought him over a little after 3pm for his first look at the Radio Road property.

Jeff was keen on Mark seeing him crank the big diesel generator and switch the house power to it. Just two button pushes after the generator was up to speed switched off the external power and switched the whole building to the generator.

Darla had prepared a nice supper for us to enjoy as a family after the visit to the property. It was a great pleasure to have our whole family together.

December 23, 2021

Thursday was a shopping day for the ladies, while Jeff, Rod and Mark spent some time at the property.
In mid-afternoon, Jordan and Elyse were working on the decorations of the structural pieces for the gingerbread house which Elyse had designed and cut out.

They are adding decorative detail to the structures of the house. Jordan is adding green branches on the gingerbread Christmas trees.

The gingerbread house has taken its final decorated form with the efforts of Elyse and Jordan.
Darla fixed another fine dinner for us on the outside grill, which process was of course of great interest to the dogs!

The sight of any variation on a gingerbread house brings back to our minds one of our all-time favorite pictures of Jordan and Ashleigh in 2003 with that year's version of the gingerbread house. A print of that picture hangs on our wall at home. This year's version was designed from scratch by Elyse, who laid out the structure pieces on cardboard and cut them out as designs for the gingerbread pieces she would make. These pattern pieces are behind Jordan on the left.

December 24, 2021

Christmas eve was a beautiful warm day. Mark, with Rod and Jeff, took his drone over to the property and did some trips to get aerial video of the property and its surroundings. Flying in this beautiful blue sky, he got a nice video survey. This view is of the back of the house.

We took the drone back to the house, and the dogs got very excited about it flying around the back yard.

Jeff led the Christmas Eve devotional and carol service at Northshore Church in Slidell. He included the traditional nativity scriptures.

Andrew and Andrew played the musical instruments and led in the carol singing.

The congregation was surprisingly large! It was larger than the Sunday service on the 26th.
Jordan was on the front row taking the pictures.

Darla and the girls had gone with Grammy Judy to the earlier Christmas Eve service at Peace Lutheran Church, and then we all converged to her house for the traditional oyster stew dinner and visitation time.