Merry Christmas!

Lily, Will, Dad, Owen, Mitch, Ems

It was my turn to host this year. . . Last year Adrienne hosted, but years previous to this it was ALWAYS at my mom and dads house. The house was always decorated to the nines. When you entered their house the first thing you saw was a 15 foot tree decorated with collection of ornaments that were collected over decades, candles lit, fresh greenery all around. My mom even had my dad plant holly bushes in the back yard just for the season. Sadly, we accept the change, wishing that it wasn't so, wishing that the tradition of Christmas Eve at Grandma and Grandpas house could continue on, but it is time to build new traditions, while always cherishing the old. So it is my turn to host and I was not in the mood for the traditional:
I mean what are my choices?
Ham. . .had it at the ward party,
Turkey. . .Um, no babe.
Prime Rib. . . yum, but a bit heavy right now. I am still recovering from the one we had last year!

After much consideration, I decided that we would have an international Christmas Eve dinner. We would have a dish representing each of the families cultural traditions and our family is predominately white bread: German(Richard), English (Me), Swedish (Adie) We added dishes from other countries that we felt would be yummy. So we had German bratwurst, sour krout, potatoes, carrots (Richard), Korean BBQ Ribs(just because), Swedish red cabbage(Adie), Japanese teriyaki drummets, rice(my friend Mauri), and for dessert, English Trifle(Me). I was a little nervous about pulling it off! Would all the tastes meld. Would it come together in the end? I wasn't sure until Adie did a little research when attempting to decide what she should bring and she came across the side dish called red cabbage salad which is a traditional Swedish Christmas side dish served with sausage and ribs. Perfect! Once I heard that, I knew it would all come together perfectly, and it did!

The kids made flags representing our cultural family heritage: Germany, England, Japan, Sweden and Philipines (in honor of Robby) and some of their favorites.


Here is a shot of the meal.

Look at that. It is sooooooooooooo multi-cultural, it is like the "United Nations of Food."

When you look at the melding of dishes on this plate, don't you wonder why can't we all just get along in real life. I guess people are a little more complicated than food, huh.

Here we are eating it:

This is Pamela's "If you take one more picture of me. . ." face

Adie and Scott

Will, Love that kiddo

Here is the game we played while eating: Do you know your flags?

Richard is the game emcee. He uses these flags in his class.

Adie paying close attention. She is a fierce competitor, but in a fun way.

Scott is impressed with his knowledge of the flags. What do you expect from "The Big Fish"

And For Dessert:

English Trifle Yummy
with Nancy Murphy's raspberry plum syrup as an added bonus to the flavor.
Thanks Nancy. We so appreciate the gift.

It was a fun event. We missed Rob and Claire and their girls as well as Michael and Candice and Dan and Nicole and their babies. At the end of the evening we went back to the traditional and read the passage in Luke of Jesus' birth and watched a movie called Mary, His Mother created by my dear friend Rachel when we were in Young Women together. It was beautiful and touched my kids so much they wanted to see it again. Thanks Rachel, I love you.

Can you tell that Owen has had enough of Christmas pictures

Merry Christmas!