Christmas Eve 2010

 So is it just me or did Christmas come really fast this year? I hope everyone had a really great Christmas with friends and family. So our Christmas started off in tradition in that Christmas Eve we would go to my parents house and have our Christmas dinner and gift opening. Our Christmas guest list this year included of course my mom and dad, my older brother, myself and my husband, John and Rachel, and Rachel's brother Josh and Stefan from Austria (he was here on a student exchange program). It was a lot of fun with this group of people.

Remember that post about the perogies? Well they served their purpose that night, they were sooooo good! They take so long to make but so little time to eat them. As a tradition for our Christmas Eve dinner, we start off with passing around a "wafer" and who ever is passing it around to everyone else, wishes them Merry Christmas as they break off a piece and eat it (its a polish tradition) Then we have mushroom soup as the "starter" and then comes out the rest of the food for the main course which includes perogies, cabbage rolls, chicken swiss, butter and onions, mushrooms and onions, a shrimp ring and this year my mom through in a zucchini dish to try to make it a bit healthier. Also something that is always at the table for this meal that I refuse to eat is pickled haring! Ewwww! No way am I eating that.

Once dinner is finished we are all usually so full so we don't really have dessert, we all go and try to find a place to sit  lay down so our food can digest. Then we all go into the family and start off with our stockings. But this year before we got into our stockings mom wanted to get a group picture of all of us.



Here is the first one (starting at the back left is my husband Matt, Me, Rachel, her husband John, my Dad, in front of my dad is my mom, then it is Stefan, Josh and then my brother Jonathan)



Then mom wanted to have a "funny" picture so she went and got all of these stuffed animals to join in on the picture. Also this time too my mom gave Josh (Rachel's brother) the remote for the camera to push the button to take the picture. Well he thought it was pretty cool and kept snapping pictures as you will see with the next few pictures that follow.

Starting to get a little silly (my brother)

A few more getting silly



We couldn't stop laughing so my mom was trying to get to the camera before Josh could snap anymore pictures.

Stocking time!
Stefan, Jonathan and Dad

Josh, John and Rachel



Myself, Matt and my Mom

Then once we are done opening our stockings we move into the living room and open the gifts under the tree. I have always been the one to hand out the gifts, I'm not sure how it started but it now happens every year. So this year my mom came up with an idea for all the guys for gifts this year. I'm not sure who of you have been to baby showers or wedding showers where they have the "dice game" where you have to pass around a bowl with a pair of dice in it and try to get a pair of doubles. If you get a pair of doubles then you get to choose from the pile of "game gifts". Well my mom did the same thing for the guys. So they were passing around the bowl with the dice in it and were able to get 3 gifts each (to make it fair) then they opened them and they were all ties. And this is what they decided to do with them.

Yes they all have had a few drinks by this point. But even if they weren't drinking they still would have done this.

Then one of them came up with the bright idea that every time mom took a picture they would all have to take a sip of their drink (or a shot)

This was a "gag" gift for Matt from my brother. Since we are doing renos in our basement my brother had extra insulation that he was going to give Matt but wanted to wrap it up for him. So he got me to help him wrap it (like he does every year with Christmas) and this is how it turned out.

Then getting to the end of the night we were all downstairs and the Karaoke machine got turned on and the guys broke out to some Christmas songs and a few others.