Christmas Part 3

In my family, we don't really have any set Christmas dinner/gathering traditions, anymore.  Like I said before, things are always changing.

I don't throw around the words "as a firefighter's wife" too much, but I do, if possible, try to work it so he isn't left of the Holiday festivities.

That meant, this year we, and my sister's family, gathered at my Mom and Dad's house on Dec. 23rd and 24th.

This actually a relatively newer tradition for us. We've only been going up to my parent's the past few years.
Before that, we would go to my oldest Aunt's on Christmas Eve day, then after Christmas we would go to Florida and have Christmas with my parents and sister and her family down there.
    At some point I can't really recall at the moment, my Mom or Dad wanted to start having Christmas up here at their mountain home (Dad's Mom's home) again.

We packed a lot of fun into two days. I'm not sure how we did it, that Christmas magic, I guess.

On Sunday, the 23rd, John-the-husband got off from work, came home, and we packed the car and hit the road. It's just over a two hour drive from here to there.

We arrived, said Hey, and then several of us jumped in Mom's van and went shopping up in Murphy.
      Just Walmart, but we had a good time.

When we got back to Mom's, dinner was ready, so we ate, and then we played our White Elephant gift exchange game....which we're still not very good at doing.

My sister started this White Elephant thing a few years ago, to replace our normal gift exchange. I didn't do well with it, because I had already bought specific gifts for specific people, and when something you buy your niece ends up getting opened by her younger brother, no one's happy.

So the following year, I bought random, meaningless, kinda dumb gifts. But her gifts were pretty good. She just wrapped them in funny or trick boxes, and had an idea that after unwrapping the box, you still couldn't open the box - which seemed redundant to me - and decide if you wanted to keep the gift or trade, or...something.

I was not doing well last Christmas, and don't really remember much about it, but apparently my complaints finally got through, and she said, okay, give to who you want to (which actually means, give to everyone, because you don't give to one or two, and not the others), and also something for the white elephant exchange. Now that I could live with.
    Except I still suck at the gifts because, it's not gag gifts, it's decent gifts, but it may go to a 20 year old girl, or a 70 year old man, or anyone in between, and I don't know how to shop for that. I ended up just buying cheese&sausage and popcorn&candy sets.  Turned out, they loved those.

We played several rounds of Uno Attack, and had some cocktails, and snacked, and then later several of us jumped in Mom's van and went to look at Christmas lights.

These aren't my videos, but it all looked pretty much the same. It was bee-yooo-ti-fullll! 




The next morning we had breakfast, and then me, my sister, and my niece went shopping at some thrift and discount stores that were closed the day before.

We got back and ate dinner, then did our family gift exchange.

Later we had drinks and dessert.

My youngest niece decorated some of my gingerbread cookies for Santa.

A little while later we had to say our good-byes and head home.
   It went by so fast, but it was, I think, one of our better Christmases. One I'll probably remember best.

Back at home, we opened our Christmas gifts because John-the-husband had to go to work the next morning and, to be honest, none of the gifts were worth getting up extra early to open.
   I told them, this year I went for quantity over quality. They got a lot of gifts to open, but most would have normally been considered stocking stuffers: air freshener for Ryan's car, sticks of deodorant, bag of sour gummy worms, theater box of candy, etc. They neither needed, nor wanted anything.
    Because when they do want something, they just buy it right then.

Then I sat and watched one of my favorite Christmas movies.

On Christmas Day, me and the boys went to visit their older brother, my oldest son, and take him presents and have dinner.

We had a good laugh when Ryan came downstairs.

The spending limit on our white elephant gift exchange is $15.00, so if my Mom spends less than that, she'll include cash to make it $15.00.

So these red Santa shorts were one of her white elephant gifts, with $10.00 included.
   When the gift stealing was going on, Ryan says he wants those red shorts. We all thought he wanted the $10.00.
Haha, nope! He really wanted the shorts.

He's so funny.