Final Christmas Post

The Saturday after Christmas, we went back over to my Uncle's house for "Christmas morning". We have a tradition on my dad's side of the family that goes back to when my dad and his siblings were young. My Grandma always makes Sugar Plum ring for breakfast. I'm not sure the history of why that, but it's always been that way. It's delicious. It's kind of like that monkey bread but better. Anyway, my grandma was diagnosed with Alzheimer's a few years ago. In many ways, she is doing great, but there are some things that are just impossible now for her to do. One of those is making the sugar plum ring. My Aunt Sandy bravely took on the task this year. I'm sure that felt very intimidating and I'm glad it wasn't me that had to do it. So as you can imagine, it was VERY emotional for our family as we at sugar plum ring for the first time in decades made by other hands besides my sweet Grandma's!

After we recovered, we had a great breakfast and time opening presents. Ella gave my Grandma a framed picture with one of her Christmas pictures.




Ella and I have had so much fun playing these games!


Okay, this is AWESOME to me! My aunt gave Ella her first ball glove. I could not have been more excited. I started playing t-ball when I was 5 and played softball through high school. It's so near and dear to my heart. Ella and I have already been playing catch. I've showed her how to catch the ball, cover it with her right hand and then throw. She's actually caught on pretty quickly. I see t-ball in our near future.




This side of my family does Secret Santa every year and they are strict about keeping it Secret. The fun in that is that we go all out in creativity in giving our gifts. It's highly entertaining every year. This year my sister had Heath and she actually hid his Lowe's gift card in one of the floaties. She cut a hole, put it in and then taped it up. But you couldn't even tell.


Heath had to rip it open, after he finally figured out it was in there, to get it. I love how my sister is in the background of these pics acting so coolly.




This is Heath's Secret Santa to my Aunt Natasha. He stuck it outside the front door as if it was actually just delivered. I can't believe I didn't get a picture of the present because it's a poster of Dale Earnhardt Jr. from the Dollar Tree. He cut a little slit in the bottom of it and slipped the gift card between the poster and the card board backing.


This year we all chipped in and got back my Grandparents and flat screen HDTV.


They were very surprised.




Thank you hugs! He's so cute.


These are some more pictures of how my cousin Ethan had Ella cracking up for 2 days straight. Seriously, I don't think they ever stopped laughing until...






...they finally crashed!




My Grandparents every year, give the girls in the family jewelry or other things that were my Great Grandma's or Grandma's. It's always VERY emotional as my Grandad tells the story of what he has given us. Last year, I got my Great Grandma's manicure set. My mom got my Great Grandma's curling iron. It's SO neat to get this stuff and so much more treasured than any other "thing" I could get. This year my Grandad gave us granddaughter's some of my Grandma's jewelry, one of her very delicate handkerchiefs and then one of her books. My Grandma is actually a published other. She wrote 2 books. One is called The Practical Woman and the other is called Those Sensational Soaps, which we actually discovered was being sold on Amazon. She hasn't done anything with these books in years, but it was so neat for them to give us one with a very sweet note that she wrote to each of us. I will treasure it forever.

Well, that's finally the last of my Christmas pictures and stories. Ella got some great stuff, but much more than that, we had an amazing time with family! For that, I am so grateful.