Christmas Celebrations and Gifts

Christmas Eve’s Eve
My brother and sister-in-law asked us to let us do Christmas with them early, so they could be with her family on Christmas. We had a huge dinner and exchanged some of our gifts. Mom and Dad and my grandparents gave them their gifts, and we did our sibling gift exchange. My brother drew me (but as is often the case with married couples, lol), his wife picked out the gifts from my list.

Christmas Eve
We have an extended family gathering and potluck with my mom’s family. We have a family wide gift exchange for which we draw names on Thanksgiving (I got my grandfather and gave him seeds for his garden), a $1 stocking drawing (you contribute a $1 gift for the stocking of your sex and your name is entered in the drawing for the full stocking of goodies), and a $5 gift exchange (you contribute a $5 gift for your sex, the gifts are numbered, and then we draw numbers) plus the adults buy gifts for all the kids (which used to take forever, but thankfully there are not that many kids plus several weren’t there).

I drew Musicalmiss’s $5 gift; she hand-painted glass Christmas ornaments. Then Travelgirl had drawn me for the main drawing, and she got me two of the Barnes and Noble Leather bound classics from my list (!!!!!!). We had a packed Christmas season plus sick people, so only two of those at home and one married couple made it to this gathering; everyone else either didn’t enter the drawings or received their gifts after we came home. We didn’t have meringue trees, truffles, or peppermint fudge, but I did get some cake pops!

Christmas Day
My grandparents didn’t come this year. We had our family stockings and gift exchange and ate our cinnamon rolls (Dad tried Once Upon a Chef’s recipe; I wanted him to only try the dough, but he tried filling and icing as well; I definitely prefer the old Miserly Moms version on those two things).

All of us girls had Hallmark movies in our stockings. Musicalmiss got The Best Christmas Party Ever, Flowerchild got The Nine Lives of Christmas, and Doctordiva got The Lost Valentine (I think; it is not Christmas and isn’t one I’ve seen).

We then headed to my grandparents where Travelgirl and her husband joined us for lunch and gift exchanging. My grandmother got me the madeleine pan off my list.