Christmas Eve, Christmas Day

We had such a fun Christmas Eve. All the kids are getting older and so we can do some more "adult" or challenging games to make our evening fun. But first, the food. I asked everyone what was one thing they would like to have for Cmas eve dinner. Garry: lil smokies, Talon, cheese fries, Tanner, Chex Mix, Taz, grape soda, Cynjyn banana cream pie, me, spinach dip and bread. So we had all that plus a few other things~ all junk and all terrible for you, but delicious once a year!!

We ate,

ate,

and ate! We decided to take a picture of us eating all together, but Garry accidently put the timer on and it was set to take 10 pictures, so after the first one...

We all just started being silly!

We then played family Cranium. Me, Talon and Taz against Garry, Tanner and Cynjyn. My team FINALLY won!!

Opps, camera still set to take 10 in a row:)

Then, Tanner had come up with 6 Minute to Win It games. This one was the funniest. We had 6 lunch bags lined up in decending order. We had to grab them one at a time with just our feet on the floor and we couldn't use our hands. Tanner was pretty good at it for being so tall, he was limber enough to get the first few at least.

Then the funniest time of the night, Talon attempting to get the bags!

So. Not. Limber! He was in pain just from attempting to spread his legs far enough apart to get the first bag.

At one point, he told Cynjyn to stand in front of him to catch him incase he fell over, but still could not get even close to a single bag.

I could get down to the first bag, but Tanner was laughing HYSTERICALLY at me, which made me laugh, so I couldn't get my mouth on the bag!! But at least I could get down to it unlike Talon!

Taz got the last one...barely.

And Cynjyn had no problems getting all 6 of them.

And Garry got at least three, but his back was tweeked the rest of the night and the next morning for his effort!

Here's a collage of the rest of our games: Getting an egg across the floor with a box, flipping spoons into a cup, laying pencils across the top of our hands and flipping them into the air and grabbing them starting with 1 going up to 12, and stacking up to 7 ding dongs on our forheads one at a time. Boy did we get a lot of laughs out of this part of our evening.

We then played Mormon Mouthful and MadGab!

We had our gift exchange which was fun because for the first time, everyone bought their own gift to bring $10.00 or less and so I only knew what I'd brought!! Taz got three cans of silly string, so he, Cynj and Talon had a SS fight afterwards.

Then we settled down for a story.

Talon read us "I Believe In Santa". He read it because one year in seminary, his teacher, Sister Burr tried to read it to the class, but she was crying hysterically and couldn't get the words out. Talon asked her if he could read it for her, and she said yes. So it is now Talon's story to read.

The next morning, Cynjyn was the first one up at 6:30 and she and I enjoyed a little quiet time on the couch just talking and watching her open her gifts from Santa. She had written him a letter this year and actually mailed it in our mailbox and had asked for suspenders, black and gray vests and some boy barbies. Much to her surprise and delight, this is actually what she got from Santa. She couldn't believe that he'd actually got her letter!!

Christmas was scaled down this year as we are going on another cruise in a month. So everyone only got three gifts from us and then whatever else they had gotten from friends, relatives and siblings. Here is Taz with his before stash!
Cynjyn,

Tanner,

Talon and Tiffany. Talon was being a grump because it was 7:00 am.

And Garry and I.

Here is the t-shirt quilt I made for Talon . I'd started in September and finished Dec. 23!! He was very pleased with it, so that made me happy. It is all his t-shirts from high school football and volleyball!

Taz and his bike.

Cynjyn in an outfit from Tiffany.

We had a wonderful Christmas!