Christmas Day has come and gone, already, but I had to share our family story with you from The Day.  The Party House hosted Christmas Day for the entire family.  We are quite a group when all assembled.

This is our family picture from Christmas Day.  It was a balmy 75 outside, doesn’t really put you in the mood to wear your best sweater when you have a house full of people.

Let me introduce you to everyone:

Seated (from l-r): Evan, the grandson; My Parents Joan & Jim (who are also the grandparents, and great-grandparents – they wear a ton of hats!); Tom, my husband(The Travel Man), and our fearless dog, Clyde.

Standing (from l-r): Cassie, Zach’s girlfriend; Zach, #2 son; Mary, #1 niece: Hilary #2 daughter; my brother Jim, and his girlfriend, Elaine; #1 daughter, Naomi and her husband Brad; #1 son, Bryan, me of course, and our #1 nephew Jim.  Whew!  That was a mouthful!

After the picture-taking festivities, we nosh on some appetizers, have a few cookies, and then it’s time for opening presents, Evan was very, very excited.  At the suggestion of our nephew Jim, we opened the gifts by family.  So each family was giving their gifts to everyone and then we got to enjoy seeing all of the present opening.  I’m kind of a stickler with this, even though it takes awhile with such a big group I love seeing everyone opening their presents.  It’s a giving thing.

So we are at the point where we only have one or two rounds of gifts to go, and……the power completely goes out on our street.  What happened next will go down in the family history books under the “Remember When” section.  Everyone who had a cell phone handy brightened up the room with their screens, and some of the kids have a flashlight app, so those came on right away.    I remember hearing my brother asking the kids, “What’s the name of the flashlight app?”.  It felt like you were at a rock concert with the lighters waving in the air (am I dating myself?).  So hilarious, I cannot begin to explain how funny this was, and how funny it looked in our dark living room.

Now, we have a generator in our garage for an occasion like this, and Tom was at the helm getting the generator started, and a few lights on so we could finish opening presents.  The guys were rigging up extensions cords, and trying to figure out how to keep the oven going so the ham could stay warm.  And, of course,just as they were about to pull the stove out from the wall, voila the power comes back on.  All in all I think it was only out for about 10 minutes, and it was definitely and adventurous 10 minutes.

As soon as we could corral everyone back in the living room, we finished opening presents which ended with my  Mom passing out our family calendar.  This is an annual event for our family, and is a wonderful way to put together pictures of the years past happenings.  More on our family calendar in another post.  It deserves its’ own story.

Evan was the paper pick up master for this event.  I could not let this post go by without posting this sweet picture of him.  Such a cutie pie!

Picture credits in this post go out to my nephew, Jim, and Elaine.  Thanks for always keeping the shutters flying at our family events.

So we have marked another year of memories on our calendars. It is always such a treat to corral all of the kids in the family for a nice holiday dinner.  And of course we always miss our long distance relatives who cannot join us.  Thanks to all of you who contributed to our Christmas feast.  I’m thinking next year were just doing appetizers and desserts!!  Did anything wild and crazy happen at your Christmas Day festivities?