Christmas Eve party agenda and surprises

First we ate, of course. The first suprise was my brother-in-law wearing a polo shirt. He's usually in a colored plain T-shirt and his Converse high-tops--his signature look. He went to church with his girlfriend for the first time in boo-koo years, so he said this was him dressing up. But then he wore bunny slippers. He said he didn't wear those to church, though.

Surprize #2: Little did I know, the kids were entertained by a stuffed chicken with reindeer antlers that plays the "Chicken Dance" that I got on clearance last year. That lasted for at least 45 minutes.

Then we played the left-right game where someone reads a story and everytime the story has left or right, you pass the prize in the respective direction. Mom brought a cool present, but the next surprize was that Shay won the reindeer candy pooper that poops out jellybeans. I guess he's never seen one before, but he and the kids loved how the jellybeans shot out of the back of it. That's what Alex is laughing about in one of the pictures below. She's the girl with the long blonde hair.

Then we played our white elephant game. I ended up with the present I brought which was "Tommy Boy-Holy Snikes Edition" DVD. I was happy about that. In this paragraph, I will mention another surprize which is that Manon actually started talking to me towards the end of the evening. She's shy, and I was shy when I was little so I can relate. Kyndal promised me that when she grows up she will talk to me right away and remember our bonding time (she's the baby in the pictures).

Then we played this game I made up where I put a lot of different questions in a hat and everyone had to pick one and answer it--kind of like "Truth or Dare" without the dare. My mother-in-law approved of it when I told her the idea. I put in questions like "What's your favorite restaurant? What's Star Wars character would you want to be? What was your most memorable Christmas present? What accomplishment are you most proud of?" etc. I thought it would be fun to get to know things like that about our family. I thought the adults might enjoy it but the kids might think it was boring. To our surprize, Blake and Carson loved it and wanted to keep playing and playing.

It was good to see Uncle Byron and Aunt Dee. They are living in an RV now, so I guess it wasn't a surprize that they didn't host the party.

Mom and Becky and I went to the 11 p.m. candlelight service at Aldersgate UMC after everyone had left. When the service was over, it was officially Christmas Day. Surprize--you'll have to wait for another post to read about that!