Country Christmas

All 4 of my blog followers have been bugging me to tell the story of my Jernstad family Christmas 2012.  Well, buckle up.  Here we go.

So we were supposed to have Jernstad Christmas on Christmas Eve.  Ya know, the night before Christmas when all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse?  That ended up being a true statement.  Everyone was sick.  So our Christmas had to be rescheduled.  Apparently Mary needed to keep baby Jesus in until it was a more convenient time.

It had been decided months prior that we would all be converging upon Joel's oldest sister's house in Indianola, a little podunk town just south of Des Moines.

Now I love Annette, I really do.  She's one of those women who can take anything life throws her way.  She has 5 children, one with Down's Syndrome.  If you gave both she and I a bag of groceries, I'd waste half of it trying to make a fabulous meal that my kids would probably hate.  She'd make meals for a week and still have leftovers.  One of those kinds of women.  I truly think she was born in the wrong era.  She'd be completely comfortable on a farm milking cows in the morning and baking all afternoon, all while raising her children.  Oh, and did I mention she homeschools her kids too?  Seriously, she's wonderwoman.  In fact, the original invitation to her Christmas celebration was for a "country Christmas" packed with country type things.  What, I'm not sure.  Maybe we'd get to go cow tipping after singing carols.

This being said, they have a relatively small house.  And Joel has a very LARGE family.  You can see the problems already, right?  So when we had originally planned to celebrate Christmas, it had been on a Monday night (Christmas Eve).  For whatever reason when it was rescheduled for January, we kept it on a weeknight.  Only now the kids were in school and we had to work all day.  Bummer.

So after working all day then picking up our kids in Ankeny (which is north of Des Moines), we then had to drive  clear to the other side of the world to have our get together.  The plan was for everyone to arrive between 6-7 so we could begin the gift opening promptly at 7.  We made it clear that we needed to leave by 8:30 so we could be home by 9:30.  Our kids usually go to bed at 8 so this was going to be a late night for them.

Joel and I arrived about 6:15.  We were the first ones there.  Slowly the others trickled in.  At 7, all were there...except Joel's parents.  Hmmm...what to do, what to do?  Do we start the festivities or wait for them? You can probably guess what my vote was.  But we waited...and waited.  Finally they arrived at 7:45.  Now mind you, I still wanted to leave at 8:30.  I figured we'd start the gift opening right away.  Nope.  Out came the hymnals.

I have no problem with singing Christmas carols.  But it got downright silly.  Someone had the idea to turn out all the lights and sing by candlelight.  Wouldn't be a problem except there was only 1 candle.   And someone else had the bright idea to sign every verse of the carols.  Did you know there was more than one verse to "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing"?  At this point, I have the hymnal about 4 inches away from my face and I still can't read the words.

At 8:10 we started opening presents.  One...at...a...time.  Luckily my kids got their gift pretty quickly so they were excited.  At 8:30 we got up to leave.  It was a quick Jernstad Christmas, compared to previous years.  We did however, get the van stuck in the mud on the way down the driveway.  At least I think it was mud.

Merry Christmas everyone!