Christmas Evening

Ok, so we all like to prolong the festivities all day long. The whole family gets together again in the evening. We usually have a bunch of finger foods for dinner to make things easy. Then we have a gift exchange. The adult siblings draw names too. I think everyone has more fun just being together.

It's a little crowded and maybe a little chaotic, but we all have lots of fun!

Since everyone is on a tight budget this year, there were a lot of homemade gifts. i like the homemade ones because there just seems to be a lot more personal thought put into it. Autumn & Dave had us. Autumn made us blocks with vinyl lettering that say "BELIEVE" on them plus she did some more vinyl sayings that we can put up on our walls. I thought it was great!This was definitly the year for porcelain dolls. All the grandaughters got them from my parents. So fun! They were all historical dolls. Summer got Princess Grace.McKenzi got Betsy Ross.My parents gave all the siblings a great gift this year. They put together a geneology book that is personally done for each one of us. It has our personal geneological lines plus it is loaded with stories about many of our ancestor...many which are personal journal entries. We also recieved a book with all the decendants of Charles Sreeve Peterson, my Great Great Grandpa. I will cherish these books for the stories and also because I know the many, many hours of work that went into these books!

Then we all dig into our stockings. This has been a tradition for as long as I can remember. We wait until the evening to open up our stockings. It drives all the kids crazy with anticipation, but they love it.