Christmas in Rochester

Advent

The Columbus kin began to arrive two days before Christmas: Amy came in Tuesday, late, Mom and Dad arrived for dinner Wednesday and the Westerville kin came later that evening. 

Which meant several days prior to this when we were trying like crazy to get the house ready, during which the boys were off from school, and Sam was recovering but still sick enough to prevent babysitters.

The key to productivity is dividing and conquering, so I took Joshie to the PM while Susan and Sam were home. They later joined us and we visited the butterfly garden there:

Another aspect of preparation was the baking of spritz cookies, rum balls (still have some left!), "maple" fudge, almond butter blossoms and chocolate-ginger cookies, and making snack food to munch on. 

On Wednesday I whisked Joshie off to the zoo.  It was in the 50s, and I let him wear his candy-cane p.j.s. Here we are in the sea-lion building:

Christmas!

Finally they arrived! Here we are, opening gifts. (Note that Sam, too, is in his PJs.)

Happy Kevin:

To get Josh out of the house and to burn off some of those Christmas cookies, we made an outing to the Mount Hope Cemetery. Here are Stu, Sue and Kevin in front of Susan B. Anthony:

Mom was insanely helpful, which was especially appreciated on Christmas Day, when Susan was in bed, sick. Here's Mom making the Christmas dinner salad:

Stu introduced us to a great new game called Smash Up. Here he's playing a game with Sam:

Here's Dad enjoying his new oscilloscope hardware:

And Sue, in her natural state:

Enjoying some urbane adult conversation:

Josh insisted on sitting next to Emily:

Aunt Amy calming an upset Joshie:

Post-Christmas Day:

We consoled ourselves after everyone left with a trip to the science museum. They were featuring a dinosaur exhibit that Josh was wild about:

Sam and I went to a demo in which they used two huge Tesla coils, switched on and off at audio frequencies, to make music:

The last demo consisted of putting some volunteers in the Faraday cage in between the coils:

Brave kids.  :-)

All in all a very good and memorable Christmas. The Columbus guests were very helpful and understanding of our being unexpectedly sick.  (And unfortunately, Mom is even now getting over the same bug.) It was by far not the ideal, but everyone kept a good attitude and redeemed the situation.