Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Christmas 2009

Tito's sister, her husband and their son arrived from California on the 23rd to spend Christmas with us. Margie had asked for snow and it was snowing when they arrived and snowed through the night. We did not get the big storm, but enough to make them happy. On Christmas Eve we went to Candlelight service at church. I love this service - the music, the candlelight, the message.
I asked the kids to come over after church. I wanted to give Kaiden's gifts to him before the craziness of the next day. He wasn't too interested in the packages, we had to take the gifts out of them for him.
We gave him mostly clothes since he is growing so fast. Tito had to give him a vest and t-shirt with a motorcycle!
Our tradition is to have brunch on Christmas morning so the kids can go to the other families later in the day. We then play a Crazy Christmas stocking game. Throughout the year, we gather items for the game and everyone always has a good time. Tito and Margie's cousin, Barbara and her husband, Gary joined us.
The game begins with all the presents heaped on the table from one end to the other


For me? You shouldn't have! Sorry, Margie, we didn't. The game is played with dice, for each 1 and 6 you roll you take a gift from the table.

And just when you think you have a good pile of gifts - you roll two 3's have have to put everything back.
Or, people start taking your gifts, which is what happens when all the gifts are gone from the center of the table. Some of the gifts are passed back and forth many times and you don't even know what is in the package! This goes one until the timer goes off. Then you get to open the packages you end up with and see what you fought so hard to keep.

The gifts range from small gift cards to restaurants, bookstores, and the highly sought after Starbucks, to free samples sent for in the mail, to items such as dental picks, toothbrushes, chap stick, socks and even a dollar bill thrown in. Some of the gifts are very gender specific and this year there were baby items so there is wheeling and dealing going on after everything is opened. But the one gift everyone anticipates is one that comes back year after year.....

This lovely ceramic shoe. The anticipation is who is going to get stuck with it! This year it was Gary who left it behind because it didn't fit.
We had a wonderful Christmas day with all the family and have had so much fun with Roger and Margie and David.

2 comments:

grammy said...

What a great gathering. That game sounds like so much fun. How long do you set the timer for? Then you just go in a circle and roll the dice? How many gifts does each person bring?
The baby looks so cute in his vest.
Are you celebrating today? New Years.
Well Happy New Years to you(o:

Tonja said...

It all sounds terrific! What a neat way to do the gift exchange! Bet that's fun!

And, the baby is just so cute in that vest! Precious!

Happy New Year!