4th Annual Sibling Christmas Eve Eve Party

Vince and I in hooded footie pajamas. I am the Stay Puft Marshmallow man and he is Mickey Mouse.

 It was hard when we were first married to figure out a way to combine our family Christmas traditions. I grew up having a big fancy Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve night and opening presents as a family after, on Christmas morning we would go see what Santa brought us -usually our biggest best present- and we would have leftover fried ham and Christmas cookies for breakfast. Vincent's family opens their presents on Christmas morning and receive holiday pajamas from their mom on Christmas Eve. We went more with Vince's parent's traditions since we were local to them and my parents were in another state and decided to just always do Christmas by visiting my sister every year. 

Because of the above and my need for traditions I started our own new tradition (which is hard to do when you don't have children of your own to get excited about Christmas for you.) I host an annual sibling Christmas Eve-Eve party with white elephant gift exchange for my husband and his siblings. I am just an honorary sibling since I'm an in-law and my own sibling/family do their own thing without us. The first year we were going to watch Muppet Christmas Carol but somehow it lost the vote to Muppet Treasure Island and an odd sing-along tradition was born.

Vince was overjoyed at getting wooden puzzle brain teasers.

As the years pass its harder for all siblings to get together. This year a spouse was added and she as well as James had to work late. However, we were all together for at least 20 minutes. This years White Elephant included a set of Chuck Norris joke books, a bag of ball pit balls, mustache coasters, a handheld skiball game, wooden brainteaser puzzles, and a gag box that looked liked a chest hair shaving design kit but was a Mario goomba hat. Last years best gift was a tie between a singing Justin Beiber toothbrush and a set of suicidal sea monkeys.    

Somehow another odd tradition came to be. Katie shaving James' head and us playing pictionary on it.

Inside the Gag box was this Mario Goomba hat.

The Gag box made Katie believe she received a chest hair shaver/design kit.