Christmas day in Kearney started with roughly twenty people all digging into their stockings. It wasn’t as chaotic as it might sound, but still somewhat intense for the first thing out of bed.
Technically breakfast started before stockings I guess, and then continued after… I don’t know where to throw this in, so its going here…
Food over the entire trip was amazing. There were so many sweets around it was overwhelming, and they were all really good. Heather again earned my undying respect by resisting it all, and not even complaining about not being able to eat sweets during Christmas.
In the back ground of the morning was the challenge of cycling 20+ people through 2 showers and 3 bathrooms. Everyone gets along really well or I suppose things could get uncomfortable. Somehow everyone got ready in time, and by mid morning we were all assembled to start the formal process of opening gifts.
I don’t think too many families approach Christmas gift opening as a “one person at a time, one gift at a time” occasion, but its tradition, and I have to say I am fairly attached to all the Christmas traditions. We always open gifts in order of age, and this was the monument where it finally hit me that Heather is a little younger than my sister. The gift opening process took a while, but as always, was a lot of fun with everyone there. I somehow managed to surprise Heather by giving her an ice scraper, despite her having specifically asked me for it, and only it.
After we finished with gifts, we had the traditional Christmas dinner, fitting everyone into one big room downstairs. Throughout all of this it was really fun for me to see Heather get a chance to interact with my extended family. I really enjoy spending time with them, and wanted Heather to feel at home… I think that process started at least 🙂
After dinner we had a few hours of downtime (or maybe I am forgetting something already). Then it was off to the church to meet with the extended-extended family. My mom’s cousins etc, I don’t know what the proper term for them is. We had a few more hours to hang out and talk to people, then more food, then more gifts! Once we finished cleaning up the church, we headed back to the house.
I think we probably could have fit a little more into Christmas day, it didn’t seem that busy to me at the time, but writing it all down we did a lot. At any rate, that covers the high point of day two.
-Jordan
Nelsons 