Loralee's Fancy: Christmas 2020

Well, it's New Year's Eve, so I guess it's time to talk about Christmas. Or at least to show off my kids' Christmas gifts.

This looks like Christmas morning, but it's not.
This is what it looks like the week before Christmas when you have seven kids at home,
all buying gifts for each other.

This year the kids drew names in April so they'd have lots of time to plan and make their gifts. And in October or November a few of them got started. We still spent the week before Christmas madly working on the homemade gifts...but they were pretty cool. And, fortunately, Bruce was able to help quite a bit this year.

The first photo of Christmas morning.
These girls get up an hour or two before everyone else every Christmas so they can hang out in the great room and talk, and admire the tree with all the gifts around it. Also so they can make themselves look cute for photos...unlike some of us.

This candy jar, and the dolls, belong to Jessica. Santa wanted to fill her jar with candy for Christmas, so he got about a gallon of chocolate kisses, peanut butter cups, and other chocolates. Then he thought to ask her what kind of candy she likes best. Reeses Pieces and M&Ms because they are crunchy. So Santa bought a bunch of those to fill up the jar, and left the other candies for the rest of the family. We still have some.

Leaving filled stockings hanging on the mantel is an iffy proposition. This year Santa placed them on the piano. They had lots of chocolate candies in them.

I was the last one to enter the great room before we started opening gifts so I snagged this picture on the way there (at 8:00 a.m. We've never done it this late in the day before!).

And then I snapped this pic right after I sat down.
Merry Christmas, everyone!

OK. On to the fabulous gifts:

This year Jessica made Kaylie a turtle-duck (all by herself!). It is a character from a cartoon that Kaylie likes, and she loved her little duck.

Kaylie gave Rachel a lap desk. She needed a little instruction, but she did the work herself. The symbol inside the lid is one Rachel designed. She guessed right away that Kaylie had made the desk, because Kaylie is one of the few who's seen that symbol.

Brandon got a set of building blocks from Jason. But not just any building blocks; these are sized to work with a role-playing-game board. They (will) have magnets in them to hold Brandon's buildings together when they play RPGs.

And Brandon made Ryan some Q-tips.
No! That Q-tip box has a leather pouch that will hold earbuds and charging cables when they're not in use, or for travel. (Although it came with candy in it, so I guess it could also double as a candy-holder.)

This is not a homemade gift.
Bruce got a melodica for Christmas—you blow through the tube while playing the keyboard, and it sounds something like an accordion or a harmonica.
I think it was his favorite present this year.

The kids all made me a present this year, too!
They decorated four aprons for me. I particularly like the T-Rex wearing a fez.

About halfway through opening the presents we paused to have our amazing, traditional breakfast. This is also something we've never done before.

Then, back to the unwrapping!

Michael made a fancy gaming box for Jason.
Covered in velvet and lined with satin and brocade, it will hold a deck of cards, and all of his RPG dice. Or, if Jason ever gets tired of gaming (not likely) it could also be a trinket box.

Rachel was one of the first to finish making her gift. She got Michael's name, and she designed some T-shirts for him. I don't know if you can really see it, but the black one has a snake draped over a tree branch and it says "Wake me up when it's less hot." The gray shirt has a symbol and a saying from one of Michael's
favorite books.

Ryan made Lindsey a knitting bag. It's pretty fancy...made with two inside compartments—one for holding the yarn and one for holding the project. And a pocket to hold knitting needles, too.

And Adreanna's gift from Lindsey was the very first one to be finished this year: a succulent fairy garden, complete with a little bridge. Lindsey sneakily hid in on my plant shelf back in August.

The kids all really liked their homemade presents; it's our best Christmas tradition.

But, you say, what about Jessica?

Nope. This jacket is not Jessica's homemade gift.
This is something she asked Santa for.

What was Jessica's homemade gift?

Well, that was the question of the season!

Adreanna drew Jessica's name, and she had a really great idea. But she was in Vernal Theatre's production of "White Christmas" and didn't have a lot of time to work on it. Because it needed a lot of woodworking (and Adreanna has never done that before), Jason came here to help her out with it. And Brandon helped, and Bruce helped, and I helped, and it floated around our house for a month. Everyone knew it was a homemade Christmas gift, but nobody could guess what it was or who it was for.

Sadly, Adreanna wasn't able to finish it before Christmas (she only had about two days that she could have worked on it). And, even sadder, no one took a picture when she presented her mystery gift to Jessica and everyone tried to guess what it could be. (We couldn't even reenact the presentation, because I've already put away all the Christmas decor. 😉 )

But here are the pictures I took of it this morning:

You can see that it's a flat box, with a hole in the middle. There's also an open space which a drawer fits into. (I didn't get a pic of the drawer.)

I don't think I'll tell you what this is going to be. I'll just leave you to guess, and then write about it when it's all finished. It will be cool, though.

And there was one more homemade gift this year:

Can you see what it is?

I made one of these for each of my kids this year. Rachel was the first one to open hers, and when she saw it she said, "I guess this means I have to move out now." Yes, I served each of my kids an eviction notice for Christmas. Or maybe I just gave each of them a copy of my cookbook—which was my most exciting present this year. The most exciting one I had to give. (I have a lot more to say about this, but it will have to be another post.)