Crissman Christmas

Saturday my mom hosted our big family Christmas gathering - it was a blast!  Some people in my extended family are hilariously funny, which means we laugh a lot :)  We do two big gift exchanges - one where we draw names and one "chinese auction/white elephant style".  Once again, the Chinese auction gift exchange did not disappoint.  The girls were a smidge confused by the whole idea, Lydia lucked out with a gift that fit her to a T (a small purple jewelry box with a gaudy butterfly on the lid) and Isaac mostly entertained himself playing 'horsey ride' with Justin (married to my cousin Julie).

The 3rd generation kiddos (8 of them) ate picnic style and won all sorts of points for charm and general entertainment value.

There were 20-something of us in the "middle generation" - but only a few of us have children, so there were plenty of folks around to help with the kids, like my cousin Susan :)  I love this about big gatherings... all three of our children really enjoy gatherings like this and are deliriously happy to be in the thick of things.  (Although at one point in the evening Isaac asked to go to bed - I think he had about as much stimulation as one little guy could handle in any given day!)

It was a special treat to meet Eric and I love this picture of Matt cuddling him - my cousin Julie edited hours of video tape and created a compilation of "cousin clips" from old home movies.  It was so fun to watch the video she created - all the video from her dad's camera that included the cousins (there were 9 of us in the original bunch, plus 4 'baby cousins' that joined about ten years later).  The footage, mostly from the early 80s, brought back lots of memories.... and now my husband holds her baby and we are officially grown up.  Where did the time go?

PS - This is Graham, married to my cousin Susan.  Does he look like anybody you know?  (The hat is not a typical part of his wardrobe... I told you my family was funny!)