Christmas is always CRAZINESS around here mainly because even though we don’t technically TRAVEL per se for the holidays, we definitely are travelling Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  I love living close to our families though and I’m thankful that we are afforded the opportunity at least for the time being, to be able to celebrate with both sides.  Our festivities actually began Monday, the 21st since Mom and Dad were in town from Florida (yippee!) and Chris and I were BOTH off ALL WEEK!! 

I decided to plan an itinerary of fun for the week after hearing about friends of ours that had a laminated itinerary for Thanksgiving! (You know who you are!)

The note at the bottom was for those family members who like to complain about activities…  :) We didn’t actually complete all the things listed on the schedule but most of the things went fairly well.

We started Monday off with a spectacular event otherwise known as a Wii Tournament! We split into teams and tallied our wins from several games which ended up carrying through till Tuesday night. We had a small glitch in the plans when we realized that we had to set up everyone on the Wii Fit in order to play the games… hula hoop, ski jump, ski slalom.  Getting set up means going through the balance tests and calculating your BMI! Yikes!! Not the sort of thing you want to do in front of the entire fam, but somehow we managed to convince everyone to expose themselves to us all.  :)

We had a great time in spite of the glitch and had great fun laughing as we watched everyone hula hoop and ski!

After two days of Wii-ing our hearts out… a winner was declared.  Team Chris pulled it off with additional members, Renee and Mom!  :)

The next activity on the agenda was the Karaoke Contest.  Chris had low expectations of the success of this particular item on the list, but I have to say this one of the funnest things we did. Each team picked a song from a list and was given the lyrics and the track to that song.  Then we split up to rehearse our fabulous numbers…  Just the rehearsals themselves were enough to make it a memorable event.

Chris, Mom, and I were the least entertaining singing “Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas.”  The best part of ours is when Mom’s line comes and she starts out in this amazingly high voice…  :)

Jared, Mack, and Jen were just plain good singing Frosty the Snowman.  Seriously could go on the road with this one.  Jared has an adorable part at the end that ended up clinching their win.

Last but not least, I must mention Team B consisting of Mom, B, and Haylee.  (Mom was on two teams to make them even.)  They sang the 12 Days of Christmas and after 2 or 3 starts they finally managed to actually make it through the song.  I think I was really crying by the end, I was laughing so hard.  Mom kept forgetting which number they were on, and B and Mom kept snatching the lyrics back and forth from each other throughout the song.  Meanwhile, the child on the team… the SIX year old… was able to hold it all together stoically the entire time!  :)  Definitely an event we won’t be forgetting…

We also did some Christmas Caroling to an old professor of Mack, B and I that lives right down the road from us.  He has since retired, has no children and his wife’s health has been failing.  Mom thought it would be nice to let them know we were thinking of them… 

Christmas Family Feud was also one night and Sugar Cookie Making was pushed to the Monday after Christmas but we did manage to squeeze it in!

All in all it was a fun week despite an hour of driving each day getting back and forth to mom’s…

(more of Christmas festivities to come…)