Christmas Eve with Papa Dave and Sue

Christmas Eve evening we heading to Dave and Sue's for dinner and festivities. When we were at DisneyWorld I decided to get all the cousins Mickey and Mini Mouse Santa hats. Sara and Meredith's pics came out so cute, Trace was being Trace and Kaity and Carson's were too dark (I still don't know my camera at all!). But the group shot came out cute.

Every year we do 'crackers' or 'poppers' after dinner. This year Meredith and Trace made them for us all. Michelle did the shopping to find goodies to fill them up with, Meredith kindly emptied enough rolls of toilet paper for us all to have a tube and Sue found jokes and crowns. It was fun to open up our personalized gifts and the 4 year olds had a blast making them. Trace made the boys and Meredith made the girls.

The 8 year olds started the tradition last year of going shopping with Sue at the dollar store to buy gifts for each family member. It is pretty hilarious to see what they think we all need. Carson bought me some lovely foam visors (in pink/purple/yellow) and Kaity got me some lotion. Kaity was most proud of her gift to Uncle Mitch....STINK PACKETS. Last year he got a back scratcher this year stink packets. Pretty funny.

First we did the kids gifts and then we did our draw gifts. Each of us draw a name to buy for and it is a secret until they get the gifts. Our famly drew Steve, Mitch, Michael and Sara. Surprisingly it wasn't to hard. I had fun with Michael giving him the UW football since he is such a huge UW fan...YEA RIGHT! He was very excited to go home and write their season record on the ball to display! He was even more happy when he opened up his gift certificate to the new golf course in Pullman (Thanks Dita and Jeremy for the help on that!!! Jeremy is the Pro there so if anyone wants to golf at a fabulous course give him a call!).

After we do those gifts the adults do a $5 limit white elephant exchange. We have so much fun with this one. I got on the internet to find some ideas. I took a bag full of everything you need to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Steve ended up with that and got lots of chuckles...almost as many as Lori's USB plug in back massager, lol. We had a great time and went home with tired kids....that all got along so well so it made for an even better night!

Christmas Eve with Papa and Yaya

After left Peggy's we headed to my parents for brunch. We enjoyed good food and then opened gifts. I made calendars for Kathie, Peggy and my parents. I wish I would have had time to make them myself but I do have to say that Shutterfly did a great job on them and they were a big hit. Kristin and Scott were supposed to be at the Boise State bowl game in San Diego but with the snow storm we had their flights got cancelled so they didn't get to go :-( I felt so bad for them but Alaska was great and fully refunded their tickets (which were my parents gift to them for Christmas). So they will to plan another get-away sometime in 09 and we got to all be together. We had a great visit with my family and enjoyed another great Christmas!

Christmas Eve with Grammie and GG

We started our morning off with Rick's Mom and Grandma in Richland. Amee and Mitch came in late Tuesday night and followed us down to her new apartment. We were able to use their big rec room which worked out perfect. The kids had fun opening up their gifts and playing with Trace's new Star Wars get-up. Since Christmas Eve is so busy we couldn't stay nearly long enough but it was fun to visit and spend time with them. It has been a rough year on Grandma with her cancer this summer. And we just got word that the cancer has returned. She looked great so hopefully further tests will show that is wrong. Please keep her in your toughts!