Day three of our Christmas saga started off pseudo-relaxed, with no official events until 3:00pm that day.
However, Heather and some of the aunts decided to go check out the day after Christmas sales. For some reason this required leaving the house by 8:00am. For the first (and only) time in the trip I was somewhat glad Heather and I were not yet married and I slept through that departure, not waking up until 9:30 or so. Getting a shower still took a little bit of standing in line, but I was showered and ready for the day about the time the shoppers returned.
With everyone back at the house, it was time to start setting up for the shower that afternoon. A lot of cleaning and reorganizing went on. All the chairs and some of the tables from the basement had to come upstairs, Christmas deserts and food had to go out to the garage (nice and cold) and shower deserts had to come in, etc. Yet another reminder of why my family is great, everyone was ready to help and cheerful about getting everything ready. It somehow seemed wrong for Heather to be doing some of the setup work, but she jumped in and got involved with everyone else.
about the time the shower was going to start all the guys piled in a couple of vehicles and headed out to “the blind,” my grandfathers goose blind on the Platte River. We had a lot of fun shooting clay pigeons and playing in the snow. The actual trip out to the blind was done on this rig:
My “fearless” little brother also attacked the ice with vigor:
Back at the house, Heather was having a great time at the shower, or that’s what she told me later. I can’t really say much about the shower, except to say that it was really nice to see my family embrace Heather in that way. After the shower, I was pretty overwhelmed by peoples generosity! We received a lot of really neat, and thoughtful gifts! I started to worry about our chances of getting everything packed into my Escape for the drive home!
Once the guys got back to the house, it was time to clean up from the shower, move everything back down to the basement and get ready for another party! My grandpa’s birthday is the day after Christmas, and its part of the holiday tradition for us to celebrate it. Somehow he got stuck cooking for his own party, but it was again, a great time with great food.
after the party, we cleaned up again, and started packing for the drive to McCook to spend a few days with my parents. We quickly discovered we did not have room for both my brother and everything that we wanted to pack in our vehicle. I had already promised Andrew he could ride with us, so we had to offload some of our packing to my parents van.
Other than the drive home, I think that sums up another day!
-Jordan
Nelsons 