Twas the Night Before Christmas

The girls came home and we decided to do our Christmas a day early. My family has a family party the day after Christmas each year in another town. See that post here. We always have to do Christmas, clean it up, cook the Christmas dinner and pack for a few days all in one day. 

This year, I figured if we did Christmas a day early, we could have our Christmas, do the dinner and have a day in between where we could clean up slower, eat the rest of the left overs and not have to put all the left over food in the freezer etc. 

I LOVED doing it early. We enjoyed ourselves so much more as we didn't have to take the Christmas tree down on Christmas and I could spend more time with the girls rather than rushing to cook, put it away and pack. 

We opened our "One present" after we got our matching pajamas. See our post about that here. Everyone got new footie pajamas. We changed into them and then opened our "one present" and then we were ready for some fun. 

We decided to play "black jack" and use the money in our money jar to bet with. We had to figure out the dealer and how to pay out. It turned out to be more like a black jack Poker game. It was fun and we played until one of the girls ran out of her money. 

We played a game of choice for each person before that as well. We played Scattergories, Clue, Ark of the Covenant, Nertz, (See that post here) and Farkle. 

We really enjoyed playing games together all day and into the night. It was cute to see the girls stacking their coins and working on figuring out betting. It wasn't our thing but it was worth a try. Perhaps if we bet with candy that the girls liked, it would have been more exciting to them. 

I think we will be doing Christmas early every year as long as my siblings party is on the day after Christmas. 

I got more sleep than I have in forever for a "Christmas Eve" night as I always have to pack the extended family gifts an get those ready as well so we can head out of town soon after. 

What I would really like to do next year, is to take all the girls to New Zealand for Christmas and enjoy the warm beaches for Christmas and visit all the host families I made while there. It can't hurt to dream. 

We hope you have a MERRY CHRISTMAS.