Eric and I offered to host his mom's family for Christmas Eve this year. We usually go to his Aunt Patti's house, but decided to give it another shot at our house now that most of the kids are older and our house is significantly more kid-friendly :) We realllllly enjoyed having everyone here and hope Aunt Patti will relinquish her hostessing rights again in future years :)
Whitney again had lots of fun playing with her Coggon family cousins, and while I was nervous about having so many "tween" boys in our house, they all behaved nicely and no one was hurt! haha Whitney is the oldest girl cousin who lives in the State (we missed Samantha and hope she'll join us next Christmas!), and the older boy cousins are 13, 12, 10, 9, 7, 6, and 4. They are all nice kids...I was just concerned because there are a LOT of them and they are high energy kids :) Thankfully, the oldest cousin, Kyle, coordinated a game of football in the front yard, and the boys all had a sweaty, FUN time while Whitney and her little cousin, Kaia, held down the fort inside :)
In previous years, the Coggon Clan has had some fun ideas for gift exchanging. We've done "buy a gift that starts with your recipient's first initial", "buy an ornament that matches their personality", and last year we bought magnets. This year, it was decided that we would buy salt and pepper shakers for the person we were assigned. Whitney had a lot of fun passing out the gifts to each family member :)
I know I said it yesterday, but I reallllly love the chaos and excitement of Christmas at our house!
The kids each exchanged gifts, and it was fun to watch the boys put together their legos and transformers and then compare and "ooh" and "aaaah" over each other's new gifts :)
It is always a great time when we all get together, and I think, aside from cousin Nick who was with his girlfriend, and cousin Chris and his daughter Samantha who live in Arizona, every family member was at our house on Christmas Eve! I think Memaw was happy with the outcome...its always too short, but very sweet :)
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