Every Christmas Eve we have a gathering of family members at my home. We have food to eat and gifts to open. My daughter wore a Santa hat. Mom was the one who always wore a Santa hat at Christmas. She loved having all the family together. It has been twelve years since her passing and I still miss her greatly. My Dad is sitting in the foreground in the photo and my sister, Janet, from Writing in the Blackberry Patch, is shown to the left.
Since our family has grown so much (and not our pocket books), we decided a couple of years ago to just bring a gift for a male or female (whichever one you are), and we would then choose from the gifts. This year, we decided to draw names instead. These are my three granddaughters, my grandson and his wife, and my oldest daughter, Tania.
There were eighteen of us this year. Everyone came at different times, and we had to wait for the last ones to show up before we could open gifts. There was also an "almost" family member with us this year for the first time......one of my nephew's fiance. She got to meet a lot of her "to be" in-laws. The last ones to arrive, shown here is Charley and his fiance, Jennifer.
My granddaughters loved passing out the gifts. I think everyone was pleased with their gifts, especially since everyone had a gift list written with their name when we drew names at our Thanksgiving gathering. It was fun finding out who had whose name. My daughters and their families, as well as John and myself, also opened the gifts that we had gotten each other.
My other sister, Connie, and her husband, Steve, who don't have 
children of their own, always seem to enjoy watching our grandchildren open their gifts.
As you can see, my photos are very candid. I like to catch what's happening instead of getting a posed photo.
You've met some of my family......I'd love to meet yours.
7 comments:
Thanks for sharing the pictures, I like reading about your family. Looks like you all had a good time.
Thanks for sharing your family, Shirley.
Most of my family don't want their pictures on the net. So I don't get to share.
Oh, my. Yes those are candid pictures! I could send you one that you are in, if you want to add it to your post. We had a great time.
I enjoyed reading about your Christmas traditions and seeing photos of your celebration.
Hi ma ma, That looks like a big ole pile of presents you all had there. I bet you all had a big time opening them all up. Its always chaos at our house with all the paper ripping and such and we always did it all at the same time. I love the idea of everybody bringing one gift. It just too hard to buy for everybody. I don't have a lot of folks to but for right now, just my son and a few nephews and my parents. I give away alot of small home made jellies and cookies platters and such to my neighbors, I never spend alot of money either, it all seems to add up though by the time I buy extra grocerys for the dinner and alkl the goodies and stuff it seems to be an expensive month anyway. Hope you have a very Happy New Year and don't forget to eat your black eyed peas and hog jowl for good lkuck and prosperaity in the coming new year.
Shanda
Beautiful pictures girl! I love a big crowd at Christmas but my family has shrunk and not grown..... My son is still single and thus no little kids or grandkids around.. My older brother Paul and his wife Alpha never had children so there is only them ! Soooooooooo we make a lot of noise to make it seem like there is bunches of people ! hahahhaah
Have yourself a wonderful new year with much anticipation of what the Lord is going to do in your life!
I am really glad you switched colors of print. I have tried to go back to read your past postings, but just can't read the red print on the red background. Appreciate the effort of posting, however, I will get through them all eventually, to catch up.
Love your chatty reports.
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