Our New Xmas Eve Family Get Together

Our new tradition was a great success!

I decided a few weeks ago to begin a new Family Christmas Eve tradition - the dilemma was that since Caitlyn was no longer living at home with us we would not be able to get up early on Christmas morning as a family together to open gifts etc. so I asked if she and Dean would like to come on Christmas Eve for dinner and pressies.

And so the new tradition began ... here are the presents - a bag for each person - Jenny, Gordon, Caitlyn, Dean, Roslyn. Over the last few weeks I have been putting gifts into each bag - yes, including my own - I read an article on flylady.com a couple of years ago saying we all deserve stockings full of gifts and it is not a problem to buy them ourselves! So I bought things for the stockings, and Gordon bought things to go in the stockings too. Then we all had separate presents for each other too, and we opened everything one at a time so we could all see who got what.

Dinner was non-traditional - a family favourite - Mexican Fajitas with all the trimmings - lettuce, tomato, cheese, sour cream, pineapple - followed by home made pavlova - yum.

But the best fun was before dinner, we sat at the table, pulled our crackers, put on our hats, and chose a "conversation starter" to get the ball rolling - first one out was Caitlyn with "If you could go to Disney World with any celebrity alive today, who would it be?" - she chose Pink because you could have so much FUN with Pink!!





Next was Ros with "If you could have a super power what would it be?" and her answer - the power to absorb all super powers!!! Been watching too much telly?

and so on - it was heaps of fun and we didn't want to stop babbling all the answers for everyone - Gordon got "What's your favourite Dr Seuss book?" He never had these as a kid, but enjoyed reading Fish out of Water to our kids when they were little.

I got "Have you ever taken a picture in one of those little booths?" and I had to confess when I was about 15 having my picture taken with a boy I met on holiday in Surfers Paradise Queensland!






Then Ros got "What's your favourite form of exercise?" to which she replied What exercise! She never exercises.

Then Cait got "Have you ever been in a food fight?" and told us this amazing story of food going everywhere as a high school party, and then Ros told us about food being thrown at her primary school graduation dinner! I was horrified!!

Then Gordon got "What's the sickest you've ever been" to which we all groaned and went PASS (since both Gordon and Ros have had chemo and radio treatments we didn't feel like discussing that one!)

Then it was on to "What's your favourite Broadway musical?" which brought up discussions about Wicked (on in Melbourne at the moment) and Beauty and the Beast which we took the girls to when they were in primary school.

And so it was a wonderful Christmas Eve. On Christmas Day we visited my family for magnificent lunch, and Gordon's family for a wonderful tea, and today we are recovering! Hope you had a wonderful Christmas celebration.