Christmas parties!

The Saturday before Christmas we always go up to my dad's for my grandmas Christmas party. This year was no different. 

It is always something I look forward to! My aunts and uncles all come and it is fun being together.

We usually have dinner then play a few games and do a gift exchange. 

It was a simple fun party that started off the Christmas parties for us! 

The next day my mom threw her Christmas party. 

She always does an amazing job and something different every year. Growing up I always thought Christmas was so magical at her house and I hope to do the same with my kids! 

We had a simple dinner of pizza and a bunch of snack food. We were able to spend more time all together instead of doing the big fancy sit down dinners we usually do.

There were crafts for the kids to do, they were so cute and Emery actually enjoyed doing them! 

We then each took a turn singing Christmas songs as families.  Caleb and I sang with kiley, jason, tanner, kelsey, trevor, taylor and drew played the guitar then joined in because we were not very good to be honest. Hahaha! My mom wanted us to sing the Christmas version of the hallelujah song. So we did but only had one practice the night before, and for me it's hard to sing with that many people because we all had different pitches haha. It was still so fun to see everyone else perform!  

My mom then read a book on the symbols of Christmas. She gave us each a cute little Stocking full of the symbols from the book. 

We then did the kids gift exchange. She mixed it up this year and she had each of the kids pick a present and give it to the name they drew. 

We then did the adult gift exchange. We just played a typical game of either picking a gift or stealing one that had been opened. Only there was a twist at the end! Once we all had a gift my mom then said we were now going to give the gift we ended up with to someone else who we thought wanted it more. It was such a fun way to remind us that Christmas is about GIVING not RECEIVING.  

Again, it's something I want to teach my own kids!!

We ended the night opening all the thoughtful gifts from my mom and mike. 

I love when our family gets together, I feel like we don't see much of each other and it's sometimes hard with such a big family that even when we all do get together you don't always get to catch up with everyone! But I am so grateful to have each and every one of them in my life :) 

Yay for families!

:)