in-laws & Christmas wrap-up

I love my in-laws.

All eight-gazillion of them (there are a LOT …especially if you count my side AND Dave’s side each with nine kids as “base”).

But today I’m talking about Dave’s side:Because eight of the nine kids in his family were here after Christmas (we sorely missed Steve & Kara and their kids who weren’t here).

Whoa!

I have to add the second picture because the people my in-laws married are just as much my favorite in-laws as the originals:I love them because 1) they are all such unique, different personalities, 2) every one of those different personalities is NICE as part of the package, 3) they are seriously competitive so when they’re around everything is turned into a competition.

It makes for fun times. (Sorry for the not-so-great-pictures but I was too lazy to carry around my big camera much this year.)
This is Grace’s “group.” I wish I had pictures of all the “groups.” My kids adore their cousins.

We all crammed into my Mother-in-Law’s house for the traditional cousin white elephant gift exchange. We do it every year with those who are in town.

Although the kids look like they’re about to die of boredom in this picture, they were hilarious. They were so into all the exchanging going on.And although you can’t tell from this picture either, the adults were even more into it.

I wish I knew how to download a video of all the yelling and commotion of everyone trying to “steal” to get what they wanted. (Traditional white-elephant rules because I know you’ll ask: everyone draws numbers, when it’s your turn you take either a gift from the middle pile or you can steal from someone who has already opened something….but on the third “steal” that particular gift is “retired” and no one can take it away.)Claire ended up with the grand prize as far as I’m concerned.

I won’t go into details about Grace’s picks, I’ll just say she was half laughing/crying when she ended up with her final prize after a bunch of switching around: a dashboard hula girl. We loved having that thing on our dashboard while the stickiness lasted…

Of course, we had a few sleepovers thrown in with all those kids. This is the traditional “flour game” we ALWAYS have to do when the girls have sleepovers with these cousins. (You make a mold of flour from a cup and put a penny on the top. Each player has to cut off a layer from the side of the flour tower until the penny falls. The person who made it fall has to get the penny out of the flour pile with their mouth. Not sure who came up with that one, but man oh man it’s a hit around here.)

One night the adults went to a late showing of Avatar in 3-D at the IMAX. (Pretty amazing special effects if you ask me, but I went with super low expectations…not a huge sci-fi movie fan.)

I have a problem. We didn’t ever end up doing the “nativity” at Christmas with all the hoopla and I could NOT put away the remaining Christmas decor without having my kids dress up for FHE well after Christmas…luckily with a cute cousin in tow.

We had a major New Year’s party together. Even Lucy got to stay up to bring in the new year. Do you think she liked it? (Check out top left picture below.)


Yep, I love those in-laws.

Thanks for making it all so fun, guys.