The kids were fairly kind to us and waited until 7:30 am to fly down the stairs. Mrs. Claus had honored her tradition even in Germany, and had left each of them a book or two under the trees in their rooms. Santa had overfilled the stockings and left fun presents for everyone. I may have been guilty of over compensating a bit since we were away from home. There sure seemed to be plenty of presents under the tree!
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| Scott, Joanie, Missy & Steve |
My mom and Scott's mom are sisters, making all of us "Thomases"
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| Thomas Great Grand-Children AJ, Olivia, Anna, Rebecca, Audrey, Sophia, Rachel (in front), Stefanie & Dominic |
The bonus of course was being able to share Christmas Day with them. It was most definitely a full house! Scott and Joanie have five girls and Terry and Paul have three kids. Their kids added to our four do indeed make twelve. 12 kids ages eight to twenty made for a fun afternoon and evening for everyone!
Instead of going the traditional route of putting the youngest kids at a table by themselves we mixed things up a little. We put all twelve "kids" at our dining room table and then setup an "adult" table in the corner, right before we ate. This turned out to be the perfect solution. The kids all had a great time at their table, evidenced by the fact that they lingered over their meal happily chatting for over an hour. The grownups had our own kind of fun at our table. It was terrific! |
| Missy, Joanie, Scott, Paul & Terry (Steve is of course behind the camera) |
Terry and I split the meal which made feeding 18 people much less overwhelming. I also managed to continue all of our US dessert traditions. Steve brought me cookie supplies from the US and we managed to find all the ingredients for grasshopper pie (mint) and chocolate silk pie. There was some seriously searching involved but we tracked down that crème de menth and crème de cocoa. The cookie trays were full, we had red and green m&ms aplenty and delicious pies to end our evening
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