God has blessed us with a large family! We are now 40 in total - with a grandson just announcing his engagement, and with a new baby great grand-daughter born on Christmas morning!
Over the Christmas week, 24 of us were together at various times. It was such a joy and blessing to have family around, to get to know some of the newer members of our family, and just to celebrate being together.
There were lots of chatting, laughing, playing board games, and watching or listening to cricket. We set up a table for a jigsaw, and various members of the family worked on this 1000 piece one of Wittemberg in Germany.
It was quite a difficult jigsaw to put together, but fun to find pieces together!
We went to visit hubby (Dad, Grandad and Great-grandad) and he was quite alert on Christmas Day and happy to celebrate Christmas with us.
There was of course lots of eating! My time spent on planning menus, figuring out when to buy things, getting deliveries, counting how many for each meal etc, paid off and we had more than enough to eat. Our traditional roasted turkey and Christmas pudding dinner always deserves a snooze after it!
The charcuterie board for the evening meal was an easy option and there was plenty of help to put it together!
One of our grand-daughters had put her order in for a bee wall-hanging. Some months ago she had fun going through all my fabric stash and choosing the materials for it. Unfortunately she couldn't be with us for Christmas because of work commitments (though she did spend a lot of time in our lounge room on zoom with the Ipad propped up in a corner where she could see everything that was going on.) When she finally did receive the hanging, she told me she loved it, which made me very happy.
Now they have all gone home, the sheets and towels are washed, the Christmas decorations are packed up, the cupboards have been put back in order, the kitchen has been cleaned from top to toe and the house is quiet again!
As more and more people had to go home each day, the second jigsaw that was started, didn't get finished. I couldn't bear to put it away before it was completed, so had a relaxing week adding pieces here and there and so we have Napolean crossing the Alps:
I'm not sure whether 'relaxing' is the right word when tackling these large jigsaws! I can search for one piece for a very long time, then decide it must be missing because I have been through every piece that shape and nothing fits! Of course it eventually turns up, looking just a bit different to what I have imagined, in spite of studying the picture ten times! The sense of achievement when a jigsaw is completed is worth all the hard work, so I have already started another one!
Meanwhile I have completed another crochet bag. It's now waiting to be lined, so a photo another time.
Many blessings for 2024.
Val
1 comment:
That your family is close, and many are able to gather for a holiday gathering is a true blessing. How I miss such times. My parents always made sure we were together at some point near the holidays. You really extended yourself to be a good hostess, and I know you didn't even think twice about doing that. It's simply wonderful! You don't realize how fortunate you are... though it's likely you do. Such a good picture of you and your hubs. I'm glad he could share time with all of you too. It's no surprise that your great-granddaughter likes her bee quilt. Very nice! And jigsaw puzzles... I love them, but don't enjoy working on them alone, so I seldom put them together. That Napoleon puzzle is definitely striking!
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