Come On, Ring Those Bells

Everybody likes to take a holiday
Everybody likes to take a rest
Spending time together with the family
Sharing lots of love and happiness

Come on, ring those bells,
Light the Christmas tree,
Jesus is the king
Born for you and me.
Come on, ring those bells,
Every-body say,
Jesus, we remember
This your birthday.
We were ringing bells and everything else this weekend to celebrate Christmas together as a family. We got to my sister Raylene's early in the afternoon. Her husband Steve had an appointment to play Santa at another gathering so Carter went with to be his helpful Elf. Love his picture!

The program was full of our usual mix of jovial tunes -- like an elf song by Renell's family -- to serious notes from Mom and Dad.

Dad was up and about like he wasn't on his death bed just 10 days before. He was his usual jovial self and even cleaned his plate at supper. Good boy!

Mom was very thankful for all the support from her wonderful kids, too.

My sister Rachel sang a beautiful solo and my brother Ron (above) learned to play the guitar since Thanksgiving just so he could play a Silent Night duet with his son David. Oh the talent in our family!

My twin sister had fun with Jingle Bell Rock and telling her horse to "Giddy up, jingle horse, pick up your feet..."

We sang Happy Birthday to my brother-in-law Rick, who turned 60 on Friday, and Romey shared some inspiring thoughts about second chances. Just like our father got a second chance on life last week, we all have second chances every day to do something good. Something different. Something better.

My nephew led us all in some sharing of "LeRoy-isms." Poor Grandpa. Of course, he knows we all love him. Now he knows some more reasons why! Ha.

Oh, for our family's part of the program... we were inspired by Simon Cowell's musical talent in The X Factor and hosted a game show called The X-Mas Factor... where we pitted two random contestants from the audience against each other. Carter picked a keyword and they had to sing a song with that word -- at least 10 words of it to qualify. The winner's of big money (a large chocolate coin) were Mom (snow), RoAnn (child) and Raylene (reindeer). We had fun with that.

After a delicious meal, it was game time and present exchange time...

The old game of PIT always gets heated.

And loud! That was played in the basement!

Carter got some gifts from his godparents and cousin. Casey shows off a musical Badger football.

After opening 3 boxes within boxes, Raylene was happy to see the final present -- a ticket to Broadway's Mamma Mia! We're going together in April when it comes to the Twin Cities. I am very excited!!

The Austins stayed overnight at Raylene's and hit the road by midmorning. We dropped off Casey in Eau Claire, then had an adventurous trip home. Jim drove Casey's car to Rapids and I followed with Carter in our CRV. Casey's car has been leaking oil so he is getting it fixed in Rapids. We pretty much had to stop every 15 miles to put in more oil. I'm not kidding. Nine, yes nine, quarts later and we were home.

Now to unpack the goodies!