And what a great day!
Mom’s Christmas was starting at noon for anyone who could make it for dinner, so around 11:00 I headed over to see what I could help with. She had pretty much everything under control and to be honest I might have just been more in the way than I was helping! It didn’t take long and then all of our family started to roll in. At first we try to catch the door and help because people are coming in with presents and food and kids. And with two new babies in our family this year – that’s always fun! Needless to say when those families came, well the babies are usually snatched by someone right away. It’s kind of funny how that works isn’t it? There was a lot of conversation about just how many of our family actually were at Mom’s this year and the amount was around 50. What a great turnout! All the grandchildren were there and we were missing only one great grandchild.
The little kids get their gifts first and then off they go to play!
This is the first year that her Christmas wasn’t scheduled right on Christmas and I’m thinking she kind of scored! Tons of food and tons of fun! After eating literally a couple of times and getting way too many gifts, we did the White Elephant exchange. If you’re not familiar with this exchange, what you do is you bring a gift and into a pile it goes. First you draw numbers then we have to discuss the rules. Seriously sometimes the rules take a long time to discuss because they kind of change year to year. And did they change this year? You bet! But I think this was the best year for the rules that we used. This years rules were that we started with the number above Ma and then kept going until we got around to Ma again. Everyone can either pick a gift from the pile in the middle or steal someone else’s gift, but the gift can only be stolen twice. Now there’s a lot of funny business going on within each family and there are game plans discussed I think before they come to Christmas. But that’s what makes the game fun! And how did our family turn out? Well let’s just say it wasn’t our first rodeo either 🙂 (Thanks Jude!)
With Ma being the last one, her rules were a little different. She could take anyone’s gift in the room, no matter how many times it was stolen. And did she steal someone’s gift – You bet! Well the game eventually was over and out the food comes again to eat again before we all headed back home. Her house got picked up and dishes were done and soon her house didn’t look like 50 people invaded it for the day!
Ma and the boys
Then back home our family went to have our Christmas. It was around 7:30 and we all went to put on sweat pants and t shirts. We said that we wanted to get more comfortable, but I’m thinking it’s because we all probably ate too much at Ma’s! We exchanged gifts within our family and opened up Santa’s gifts for the boys. Santa gifts are still kept a secret in our family. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I call our kids ‘the boys’ ??
Opening gifts at our house
At the end of the night and with Kyle’s new stereo playing some retro music in the background – I headed to the bathtub to soak for a little while. When I finally crawled into bed and pulled up the covers to go to sleep, I was going over the details of the day in my mind. Now I know that I had this dumb grin on my face just thinking on how well it all turned out. I think getting ready for Christmas is pretty much like football teams getting ready for the Superbowl. You rally your team when the season begins, you help each other when one of your team looses faith in the final goal, there are some days when you’re sore and tired and not sure you can keep going on, and then the final day is here! You look back at all the preparation that you did and no matter on the outcome on the final day – it’s all OK. It was just getting there with your team that made it all worth while.
Merry Christmas!