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!!!