Family Christmas

Every year of my life, we have gotten together as a family. When I was really little, we all went to my Nanny's house (this was Mommie's Mom who lived in Atlanta where Mommie grew up). After Nanny passed away, we stopped seeing all of my great aunts and uncles/second cousins etc and just got together as the Mckinnon family... so My Mommie/daddy/aunts/uncles/cousins. This always happened on Christmas Eve at Mommie's and Daddy's house.

After Mommie passed away last year and we bought their home, we offered to host the get together. Its so so important to me to continue this tradition and I'm grateful that others have wanted to do the same. The one thing we tweaked was that we moved it to the Sunday before Christmas so as to allow Christmas eve to be a little more chill.... I know for us, thats a hard evening to pull a late night! With the kids needing to get to bed for Santa to be able to come, the later we stay up the harder it is for them to settle in. So the Sunday before seems to work well!

We always have finger foods! Dips/chips/appetizers/and desserts. The one thing I made note of this year that we really need to make sure we have next year is a VEGGIE platter and some FRUIT! We were meat and carbed out this year! HA! not that I was complaining ;-)

My cousin, Ethan, brought his girlfriend this year, too.. Chloe! She's SO super sweet and Lainey took to her immediately... which Chloe didnt seem to mind!

Lainey was cracking me up...every time I would ask her to say "Cheese" she immediately smiled like this!

Another tradition we have kept is the White Elephant (aka: Dirty Santa) game. This year we allowed Rhyan and Mack to participate. As they get older they will have to get used to people stealing from them but for this year everyone played nice and let them keep their gifts since they liked them!

Can you tell my mom was thrilled with this?! lol! Btw, she had just gotten out of the hospital that day from being sick with bronchitis. She was still pretty sick and shouldnt have come home but insisted on coming home because of the get together... she didnt want to miss it. I cant blame her.

This lantern was a HOT item which got stolen till it got retired with my Uncle Steve! Jeff was eyeing it!

BAHAHAHAHAHA! Jon tried so hard to "sell" this to each subsequent player in the game to entice them to steal it... cracked me up that he went HOME with this pedicure set!

Mack got Peeps. He was happy b/c it was candy. Till he ate one and decided they were gross! HA!

I have to take a moment to say how THRILLED I was that Ashley came home all the way from Ohio to be with us this year. I'm unashamedly rooting for this girl to move back hom PERMANENTLY.

What a treat. Jeff ended up with some wind up chicken. Gahhhh... the junk we end up with each year! LOL

It really was a great get together. I SO enjoyed having everyone over and getting to continue this tradition. Its crazy... our entire family (minus Ashley) live within 10 minutes of each other... yet Christmas is the ONLY time of the year that we all get together! I know it's probably strange to everyone to have it in the same house its always been in but for the house to be so different... but it IS nice to have room to move :-)


This year we ended up doing a second family get together... with Ashley being in town and me basically unashamedly insisting that I spend as much time with her as possible, we ended up crashing in on Shlaine and Steve's family get together. HA! Shlaine made some rockin lasagna (homemade) and we just hung out and opened gifts, etc. It was so, so nice. I'm so grateful for my whole family but the bond that I've shared with Shlaine and her kiddos is special... because of Mommie and Daddy raising me (so i grew up in the house with Shlaine when she was still at home) and then when Shlaine went through her divorce when the kids were young she came back home to live so I grew up in the house with Ashley and Tyler too. Strange, maybe. But I'm so grateful for it :-)

Yay for the iPhone 6 timer setting! Love this family photo!