The highlights

The tears

I don't know what to do with myself.  Buy Kleenex is the only solution I can come up with.  We had the local elders over for dinner on Christmas Eve and I started crying while I was setting the table because I was thinking about them away from their mamas on Christmas Eve.  (Maybe I was thinking more about the mamas.) It's rough.  I rallied though and we had a nice evening.

We had the Elders Brown (same name! and both from Texas!):

I had the boys give me their mom's cell phone numbers and I texted this picture to them.  I immediately got back two thank you texts.  Lots of exclamation points.  I know, sisters.  I know. Solidarity.

Talking to Braeden

It was incredible to see him and to hear him laugh.

Between the messy curly hair in the way on this end...

Mark's new Lego TIE fighter is there on the right of the computer because of course Mark had to show that!

...and the poor lighting on his end that made him look a bit gaunt:

...it's hard to see him well, but though skinnier, (he bikes everywhere) he seems healthy and happy.

In this picture he is recreating the crazy video Emma made when she was under the influence of her wisdom teeth surgery drugs (we showed it to him--some things just need to be shared). 

If you squint and look at the tiny picture in the bottom right corner, you can see Emma covering her head in embarrassed anguish but she was also delighted.  It's been a while since Braeden was laughing at her expense.

He was at some local members' house and I loved seeing him interact with them.  I can tell they like him and he likes them and that warms my heart.  It was all too brief and the good-bye was heart wrenching and then I felt like I'd been hit by a truck for the rest of the day.

Talking to him was the best part of Christmas though.

An extravagantly white Christmas

In the morning we saw deer wading chest deep through the snow.  It was a beautiful snowy day.

Adam and Mark shoveled snow.  Teenage boys are the best.  Boys + food (lots) = strong boys (and bonus:  they're funny too).  It's sort of a miracle.

Mark dug himself a chair so he could take a break.

No one was sick

Being sick on Christmas is the worst and it seems to happen to us a lot.  None of us were sick.  High fives all around.

"You know me so well!" type gifts

This matters to me; gifts are my love language.  Everyone was happy and appreciative and we enjoyed our new gifts all day long.  I said I wanted adult coloring books so Mark calls them my "adult content" coloring books.  Adam and Emma and I all colored a bit.

Dinner with Ammon and Melanee

Getting together with family makes everything more festive.  We got to see the exciting new gifts Cormac and Azure brought to show us (a Millennium Falcon and two stuffed foxes, respectively). I got to hold everyone's favorite cherub, Lucette, and she sucks on her two fingers exactly the same way Ammon used to suck on his two fingers when he was a baby.  I dug up some photos to show them.  We enjoyed visiting and hearing about the wonders of their new robotic vacuum.

What kind of a spectacular world do we live in anyway?