Strawn Family Christmas

Always a zoo, and this year was no different. We started at my mother in law's house, and as usual, we were half an hour late. By the time we got there, we could barely get in the front foor for all the gifts--she gets more than a little carried away, I have no idea how she does it.

We had lunch, and opened gifts until we were worn out. Christmas with kids always floors me--they get so much stuff. We are halfway to having them trained to at least recognize who each gift is from before they rip it open, but getting a thank you has just not happened yet. My mom would have beat my ass over such behavior. They had fun though, and finally we got Tim a gift he really liked-- a Webkinz monkey he is showing off in the above photo.

This is Michelle on the right-this is her third Christmas as Zach's girlfriend. We love her. She took a picture of me wearing my eye mask that came with my new jammies, so I took one of her. Little did she know, I would show it to the world.

Next we went to Jacksonville for the big family party. That is a hoot and a half--dozens of people smashed in the house carrying on like crazy people. This is PART of them in the dining room as we started the gift exchange.



The gift exchange consists of everyone buying a small gift that starts with a particular letter- this year was M. I bought a selection of mustards, because I really like Mustard. Barry took Miller Lite, as he really likes that--turned out Zach took that too. When the exchange comes, one person has a deck of cards and asks each person in turn if the next card will be red or black. If you are right, you get to choose a gift from the table or take someone else's from them. It took seven full rounds before I got to choose--I was last. It was really funny as it was obvious which gifts were beer or other adult items, and they kept getting stolen back and forth from the same people. Just when you thought you knoew what you had and it was a good one, someone would steal the package from you. I may have been last, but at least I did not get the MOON--a photo of someone's butt (I think it was Savannah's boyfriend Charlie, but he denied it--he laughed awfully hard though). The one gift no one wanted was what everyone thought was a boittle of milk, and Michelle ended up with it---but it had money taped to it. Milk money, get it?


On the left is Barry with some of the cousins--note that not only are there a lot of people in there, they are not of the petite variety. Barry is not even the tallest one!


Unfortunately, my allergies were in overdrive, so I had Barry take me back to the hotel to go to bed after the gift exchange. I got to catch most of the second half of the Illinois-Mizzou game--a holiday tradition for me except they suck so bad this year that I did not care if I saw it or not. By some freak turn of events, we won--too bad they don't have ties in basketball as neither team deserved to win--don't get me started on the free throw problem or I will never get to bed.

Today we finished our Xmas shopping in Springfield, then stopped by Ron and Michelle's on the way home. Ron is Barry's best friend from childhood, and is always up to big stuff. It is always a whirlwind catching up with them.

I thought we were having a nap and perhaps a movie when we got home, but as usual, all hell broke loose and it did not happen. Now if I can just get to bed, I may live through the next few days after all! The plan was to get to work early so I can still get everything done.....my early morning plans almost never work out though