Christmas Family Party

Shawn and I have known for a little over a year that we would be hosting this years Family Christmas party. At the time we found out we were living in a little 3 bdrm 1400 Sq Feet home and knew that we would need to find a different place to host it. Little did I know we would be able to host it in our own home. Of course even with moving into a 3000 Sq foot home, we had to do a lot of re-arranging of the furniture to get all my family to fit in our living room.

After weeks of preparing, shopping, cooking and a lot of cleaning, the day finally arrived for the party. Slowly one by one each family arrived. First we took a tour of the house since for half of my family this was the first time being in my new home. Then I had some crafts planned for the little kids. They turned out really cute, although being the host I didn't get very much time to grab my camera and document the evening. So I got these pictures a few days later. I wish I had gotten a picture of Jasmine's wreath...it was white garland with blue and white decorations....really pretty! I found this idea on a blog that I occasionally look at for FHE ideas. You can see it's made by a coat hanger and garland. Really easy for kids to make and they can hang it on their bedroom door and have their own Christmas decoration.At our last home we had a few pine trees, I had been collecting them from my old back yard since last Christmas, when I found this cute craft that uses pine cones.After our crafts were all crafted we cleared off the tables and got ready for dinner. I had planned a potato bar but realizing that most of the kids don't like baked potatoes, I also made some taco meat and set out some hard taco shells. I should have just done a taco bar! My siblings are so funny! Apparently two of my brothers were standing next to each other getting their food and one of them started to pile corn onto the other's plate. The funny thing is he didn't notice until after he had sat down and had been eating for a while...How did this corn get on my plate??!! Too funny! After dinner we had our present exchange. Now we have done this exchange different almost every year, this year was no exception. Since I was in charge of it I decided to throw a little spin on the tradition. First of all I had the kids exchange gifts with each other and recommend toys they could play with. But for the adults I went online and had a random generator mix up our names and then I gave them a theme: If I were stuck at the North Pole and I could have one thing it would be.....? And they had to finish the sentence with the present for the person they were giving it to. It actually turned out really great I was very impressed. This is my nephew (yes I know he's very tall, they all are!) trying for at least 2 minute to figure out how to get the snuggie on. There were a few blanket gifts, hot coco to share with the elves, a "little hottie" (hand-warmers), SUN-flower seeds, treats (a lot of treats!) and this is the idea that I came up with!A friendly snowman! It's Flour and Sugar for my mom's food storage! I forgot to mention that there was going to be a prize for the most creative present given (trying to get people to focus on the gift they give rather than the one they receive!) and our winner was my Brother-in-Law. He gave my brother a box of shot gun shells and a penguin call. Absolutely hilarious! Just what Hazen would be doing if he was stuck at the north pole...with a gun!As we were finishing up the presents we got a knock on the door and opened it to find carolers! One by one almost the entire family got up to see them. It was funny to watch the caroloers faces as more and more and more people were coming to the door to watch them! (we had 30 people at our house)

After the presents I had put together a game to play.... a Christmas edition of Family Feud. It was quite fun, I'd have to say my nephews (ages 14, 15 and 17) were the life of the party. They were smack talking each other and really getting into it. I had made up 12 survey questions to play but really only planned on getting through 4 or 5 of them. However everyone was having such a great time, they asked me to keep going. We ended up doing all 12 and then the 8 that I hadn't made up into cards! Great fun.

Then we had the grand kids dress up and put on the nativity play, it actually went quite smoothly since they had only one quick practice down stairs. After the performance, they all sang "away in a manger" it was quite neat. Then my kids had prepared a song as well. It's called Could I hold the baby. A few days before the party I had recorded them singing the song and it was so funny! I put it on YouTube...as soon as I figure out how to put in on my blog I will!This is Rusty who was walking past the manger and noticed we had finally put in baby Jesus. He looked back at me and asked..."kisses?" I said yes, so he bent over the manger and kissed baby Jesus! ...with his pants slowly falling down!As part of our family Christmas party we did a clothing exchange. I did this in my old stake and it's a fantastic idea. Although most of the people in my family just donated and didn't actually take anything! So before we went to bed that night we had this to clean up!Yup, that's right...it was just after 1 O'Clock in the morning and our bed still looked like this! Fun times!We also had a dessert exchange. I've heard of these and have always wanted to host one, although again my family just doesn't understand the concept of an EXCHANGE! I was left with almost all of this! (although it was great for the baptism luncheon the next day!)

So that's it, I'm sure you were all interested in how my family Christmas party went, well now you know! Fun times!