Christmas Eve 2013

We are always excited to spend Christmas time with family and feel so privileged when Lele, Popie and Uncle Jason drive all the way from Oklahoma to celebrate with us.  I have never really been a party orchestrator but this year I attempted to add some additional game fun to our celebration.  Christmas Eve was game themed.  We started off playing a few games with plastic cups and ping pong balls.  Everyone had to blow ping pong balls across a table top into plastic cups which were taped to the edge.  This silly game provided a lengthy amount of fun for family of all ages.  I was surprised how well even the littlest member could play.  Next, we timed how long it took the boys to pull out all the tissues in a tissue box.  They LOVED that activity.  And then we proceeded to throw mounds of tissues at each other in a massive family tissue fight.  In case you didn't know, there are A LOT of tissues in a single tissue box.  The boys fell in love with the app Fruit Ninja on Uncle Jason's phone and were 'black belt watermelon finger slashers' before the weekend was over.  We decorated the boys in crepe paper and then went on to decorate and bake Santa cookies.  Next, the group trekked to the mall to visit Santa before he took off on his flight.  And finally, we ended the evening at church with a Christmas puppet show for the kids before reading the Christmas Story and going to bed.  Whew!  Busy but fun day.

On a side note, I have to say how incredibly frustrated I am with my lack of camera abilities.  I have taken 2 different classes and still can't figure out how fix the settings on my camera in order to take a picture without it looking yellow in our kitchen.  Or if set the camera on auto to decide the fate of my pictures, sometimes the result is yellow, sometimes its perfect.  Finally I thought I had a break through and figured out how to diffuse the yellow ting but ended up with hundreds of blurry Christmas pictures.  All the pictures posed below are different colors, clarities and they are almost all blurry.  Why can't I take a picture?????? AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!