Christmas Eve

I still had shopping to do the day of Christmas Eve and had a miserable time at Walmart. I'm not much of a shopper to begin with, but throw in a full parking lot and millions of people frantically trying to find the perfect gift at the last minute and it's pretty much one of my least favorite places to be. After running around from 8 a.m. until about 3 p.m. I was very glad to be back in my house wrapping up Christmas gifts! I've really enjoyed making gifts out of the photos I took all year so I had fun putting together Jeanie's photo album, Marreen's picture coasters and the Grandparent collage picture for the grandparents. I was back in a pretty good frame of mind when we headed for Nampa to spend Christmas Eve with my family.

Every year my Uncle Gale and Aunt Tracie join us at my parent's house for a white elephant gift exchange.

We mixed it up a little bit this year and my mom had Zach and Spencer write directions on slips of paper for us to follow. For example, we all sat in a circle around the living room while Dave read instructions like, "If you have blue eyes, trade your gift with someone else" or "The mall is having a 99% off sale, leave your gift on your chair and find another seat" or "The Grinch stole Christmas, put your gift back on the coffee table and start over".

We each started out with the gift we brought and by the time the slips of paper were used up, gifts and people were all mixed up! The next step in the game was more traditional: starting with the person who drew number 1 out of a hat, open the gift you have or steal one from someone else.

Just about everyone ended up with something they could use. After the white elephant exchange, we opened gifts from each other. We kept things pretty simple this year and only gave gifts to the kids. We gave Ethan a soccer ball and a stack of orange cones:

Spence opened the Narnia movie:

My sister and her family gave Zach a cool pop-up Star Wars book:

Gloria was thrilled with her new clothes:

And, just for fun, my sister gave me a cute little ornament. . .

. . . It brought back great memories of my childhood. . .

. . . I LOVED Fisher Price stuff and still have quite a collection up in the attic. This is a replica of the Fisher Price Farmhouse complete with a door that mooooo's when you open it!!!

At some point during the evening, my mom started telling Gale and Tracie about the events of the other night. Everyone weighed in with their opinion. . .

Rob and Dave defended their childish behavior with a reenactment. . .

Don't they look innocent????:

I still had wrapping to do, so we headed home at a reasonable hour. It was snowing pretty hard and the roads were a sheet of ice but we made it home safely.

The kids wanted to open one present before they went to bed, so we let them open the one from our good friend, Ric. He buys them a game every year. . . it's very sweet.

The kids always sleep in the living room on Christmas eve so that when they wake up in the morning, they can see the tree and the presents. I always wait until they are asleep to put out the gifts. I ended up staying awake until about 3 a.m., enjoying my quiet, Christmas-y house while looking forward to spending Christmas day with family.