Wednesday, December 29, 2010

What A Wonderful Christmas

If your family is anything like mine Christmas day doesn't usually come and go without some sort of roadblock or mini-disaster.  Last year it was a flood at my grandpa's house right before we served Christmas dinner.  This year my brother called Christmas morning saying that he, his wife and my little nephew wouldn't be able to come for Christmas since he and his wife were quite sick.  When we found this out we knew we had a choice to make- focus on what we weren't going to have or focus on what we did have.  And so we continued on with our plans.

Christmas morning we had my grandfather and aunt and uncle over for a traditional McNulty Christmas breakfast.  The highlight of this being our stocking opening.  This has become somewhat of a legend in our household.  Our banister is packed with everyones stockings (at last count I think we had eight) and most of us contribute to filling them with unique and creative things.  This year the stockings were such a hit that we didn't have room in our stockings for everything that people brought!  After our stocking opening was done our company left so my Mom and I did our gift exchange and then had some downtime.

In the afternoon most of our extended family, along with my sister and brother-in-law met up for Christmas dinner at my aunts house.  It was great to get to see everyone and we had such a good time!  After our delicious dinner we had our 2nd Annual Baking Contest.  How it works is that everyone brings their entry (either a cookie, bar or square) along with a small entry fee and they are numbered so it's anonymous who made what.  We do a taste test of the entries and cast our vote for the winner.  The winner gets a cash pot, which suited me just fine because this year I took home first place!  

On Boxing Day after church we all gathered again at my grandfathers house for another family get together and of course, more games and contests. First was a dress-up contest where everyone came dressed up as a character from a Christmas movie and had to recite a line or two from the movie.  There were prizes for best costume and most convincing character and it was hilarious to be a part of!   My sister and brother-in-law even went so far as to do a scene from Christmas Vacation on my grandfathers front lawn.  I have no idea what the neighbors thought but I thought I was going to be sick from laughing!  This is the first time my family has done anything like this and I don't think it'll be the last!

Finally to wrap things up we played a game that I created this year called "Sing It, Act It or Say It".  I made it for a Christmas party I hosted earlier this month and it turned out to be a really fun game to play as a group so I decided to do a re-run on Boxing Day.  I've been encouraged to make a non-Christmas version of it and copyright it but I think it's something I'm going to keep for just family and friends...

So those are the highlights of my Christmas of 2010- how was yours?

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