Celebrations and Traditions

We left on Dec 20th for Oregon and a wonderful visit to both of our families. But first Stacy had her directorial debut the night before. She was in charge of adapting and directing the Christmas program at the preschool. It took months of a lot of work, practicing lines and songs with the kids, making props and decorations, coordinating help from parents, and overall chaos control of the 2, 3, and 4 year-olds. It all paid off with great success. The kids did great, aside from the to-be-expected few cryers from stagefright. Stacy shined all night. And most of all the good news of our Savior's birth was proclaimed loud and clear to a full audience, many of whom were not believers.

After taking down the decorations we went home and wound down, slept hard for a few hours, and woke up excited to leave early the next morning. We made it over the pass without having to put on chains (the requirement was lifted 5 minutes before we reached the place they were stopping people), and spent a couple hours and had some soup in Medford with Stacy's family. We got to Josh's parents' house that evening and spent five wonderfully relaxing days there. It even snowed a little on Christmas eve and Christmas day. We continued the all important little smokies tradition. For those of you who don't know about that we cut a hole in the top of a cabbage big enough for one of those little sterno liquid fuel cans to fit in. Then we put toothpicks with little smokies all around the outside. The kids (and some big kids) crowd around and roast the little smokies and dip them in ketchup, mustard, and sesame seeds. We don't really know where it started but it has been going in the Mathews family every year as long as any of us can remember. Maybe it's an old Norwegian tradition that Grandma carried on. (Rachel, Nathan, and Boaz are doing the "Smokey Dance" in the pictures.)

Then we went back down to Medford and spent five days there. We celebrated with Stacy's sister Cynthia, who got engaged to a great guy named Kenny. It was so good just to be with family. There was some snow there too. Stacy's parents are doing well in spite of some ongoing health difficulties. They keep busy and stay involved with church and with their grandkids. The four of us, Mom, Dad, and the two of us, carried on another tradition. We played Chinese checkers, which is Mom's favorite. Because he's still the new one in the family, they all let Josh win... barely.

Then we came home on New Year's Eve day, which we highly recommend because of the lack of traffic, and now were two days into our somewhat normal routines here. Overall it was a great time of traditions, celebrations, relaxing, and being with loved ones.