Blog #6

The Christmas Holiday fly's by for my family.  As soon as Christmas Eve hits were off and running literally.  Christmas Eve morning were up at the crack of dawn, getting cleaned up, grabbing what's needed for the day (because we won't return until about 10pm that night) and heading to visit my in-laws.  We visit, play games, and cook and cook all morning, around 2pm we eat!  Usually we could feed any army with the amount of food that we make, so lunch the next day is all the left-overs.  By 4pm were out the door and heading to my dad's side of the family.  We have the party by taking turns,  every 8yrs it's my turn, 20 people in all. We eat and laugh. We then exchange presents, each person is to bring one gift wrapped with no name on it, we then draw numbers and pick from the pile by the number you were given. You can pick an un-wrapped present by the pile or take someone else's. The last person to pick has the best advantage because they can take any of the gifts.  The fun part is we usually fight over the most ridiculous gift, and it's a riot when
everyone opens them to see what they were fighting for. Then we head for home because Santa has to come sometime that night.  We have to wait for our daughter to go through her rituals of setting out cookies and milk, writing a letter to Santa, and going out to the front yard to put "special" reindeer food in the front lawn.
Christmas Day unfortunately is not any slower than the day before, we get up open our presents, by 10:30 my in-laws come over to exchange and have brunch(the left-overs) Then by 3pm we say good-bye and leave to go to my parents home for dinner and to exchange as well.  When it's all said and done we usually get back home around midnight. WHEW!