Christmas Morning and Reindeer Games!

   Evelyn woke us up at about 7:50 (we told her she couldn't wake us up until 8, but that is as long as she could wait!). We had our Christmas morning family prayer and then Cranked up Mannheim Streamroller's "Joy to the World" and danced. Evelyn is getting quite good at dancing with her daddy, but I don't thing "Joy to the World" was meant to be a ChaCha. I have to admit, I missed Penny as we danced.

 

  As I mentioned before, we decided this year to do only family gifts this year for Christmas. We knew we would be getting less gifts because of it, and I am always looking for ways to stretch out the Christmas magic. I decided to copy an idea that my brother John and his family did last year. So we played "Reindeer Games."

   We put together a bunch of different activities on how to open gifts and put the in a bowl to draw on Christmas morning. The activities consisted of these things:
1.Do an act of service before opening this gift.

2. Puppet opening: use a member of the family as a puppet and use them to open your gift.

Here is my little puppet Evelyn!

 

3. Surgeon's gift: Open without tearing paper- if you do, pass the gift on to someone else to open without tearing.

 

4.crumble up the wrapping paper and throw it in a box: don't open a gift this turn.

5. Open behind your back and guess the gift.

6. Open as a family with elbows only!

 

 

 

7. Open with Daddy's big gloves on.

8. Open with your feet--no hands allowed!

This one took me such a long time!  

9. Open blind-folded and guess your gift.

10. Open with 2 butter knives.

11. Musical gift. Whoever is holding the gift when the song ends gets to open it!

12. Wild gift: open how you want! (Examples: like a dinosaur, with your chin, with teeth...etc.)

 

Evelyn tried to open the biggest gift under the tree only to find another present inside of it! She had to play another game to open that box and what do you know?! Another present! It took her six rounds to finally get to the real gift which was Hale Centre Theatre Season Tickets!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   Santa wrapped all the candy that usually goes in the stockings, so with that, all the family gifts and gifts from Grandparents and friends, we had a lot of gifts to open! We started playing out reindeer games and opened two gifts each before pausing and eating breakfast. Then we continued playing. It ended up taking us 2 hours to unwrap our gifts. We had such fun, giggling at each other and trying not to elbow each other in the eye...I highly recommend playing reindeer games next Christmas with your family.

 

We also received Nerf Crossbows from Santa: three of them! So we have been having many Nerf wars in our home. If You come to visit, you may want to prepare yourself for that... :D

 

Merry Christmas!!!

Some Christmas Fun

Christmas this year sped by! It went so fast, I feel I need to document some of it so that I can remember some of the things that happened. We decorated shortly after we came home from Florida, which means we decorated about 2 weeks later than usual--that explains why I felt so rushed all season.

Evelyn was adorable. She is old enough to remember our Christmas traditions and she would remind me over and over not to forget until we completed them. First she did it with making snowflakes, then gingerbread houses, then gingerbread men, then our scripture memorization, and finally reading the "Jacob T. Marley" book. Due to her diligence we actually accomplished all these things this year.

Here is Evelyn playing Santa Claus. If you notice in the background are tons of paper snowflakes. We got a  little carried away with our snowflakes this year because we found patterns online and suddenly Evelyn was pleased with how her snowflakes were turning out.

 

Gingerbread houses are not my favorite Christmas tradition. I used to enjoy it more, but it is so much preparation, then work, then cleanup...and all the candy gets tainted by that poisonous eggy frosting... But this year Evelyn had a friend over to make it so she didn't have to make gingerbread houses with a whiney mommy. Here she is with Carmen Ramirez.

Gingerbread men I like to do a lot more because they don't have eggs! We love to decorate them with craisins and cream cheese frosting.

This is one of my favorite Christmas decorations by Simon Dewey. Evelyn was taking pictures of all our decorations and I thought it turned out nicely.

This year we made new ornaments for our tree. We took pictures of scenes of Christ's life and put them in plastic ornaments. Evelyn also took these pictures (she insisted I write that).

Because our birthdays are all in January, we decided to do something a little different for Christmas this year. We told Santa that we didn't want any individual gifts, but only gifts that would bring us closer as a family. Of course, right after we told him this, Evelyn saw a gigantic alligator toy at Smiths and decided that was ALL she wanted for Christmas!!! We reminded her that we already told Santa what we wanted and a giant alligator toy was not a family gift. So she decided to ask Grandma for it instead. (I found a T-shirt that I almost bought for her, it said: "Watch out Santa: Grandma's coming!)  Grandma decided she couldn't resist and brought it for our Adams' Family Christmas Party. Here is Evelyn beside her alligators and dressed in her new fuzzy green alligator jammies. She named her giant alligator "Jingle".

We also had an after Christmas Cheese party with Michael's bishopric and wives. It turned out very nicely: low stress and casual, I loved it! I've discovered appetizer parties are the very best!!