Christmas the Finale

Our 3rd and final Christmas celebration was at my mom's house on New Year's day. We totally lucked out and were able to celebrate with the whole family as everyone was available to come back (well, except for those crazy Beckers living out in AZ! :P ). We did some fun new things this year!

First we had some fun getting various family members entangled in the rope game. I wish I took some video footage as we were all laughing our butts off watching various folks trying to wrangle their way out of the puzzle. Nikki and Alyssa were particularly fun to watch! :) Here's a picture of Dave and Bryan trying to figure out what to do.

After a yummy sit down dinner, we trooped downstairs to exchange our silly stockings. B and I shared our little tradition with the rest of the fam. We each had one person to shop for and could only spend $15. The idea was to have fun and get creative with the stocking stuffers. I think it was a pretty good sucess and everyone seemed to enjoy both shopping for their stocking person and opening up their various gifts! There were definitely some clever and inspired stockings! :)

Our next fun new game was a white elephant exchange with a twist - you had to don a santa hat, jacket and gloves, pick a gift and open it all before someone rolled doubles. And the dice were continuously being rolled. There were plenty of laughs and excitement as people would jump up, hurry and try to get dressed and pick out their present! I hope we can play this game again next year!

 

Many more pictures can be viewed here.

I should also mention, that B and I lucked out had Grandma available to babysit for us for NYE!! WHEEEE!!! We celebrated by going to see 7 Pounds - wow - bring Kleenex if you go see this one! It was very sad and touching and probably not the best choice for a festive night out, but I'm really glad we got to see it. Afterward, we went to dinner at one of our very favorite restaurants - Francesca's Campagna in West Dundee. They had a very festive atmosphere with tons of silver, black, gold and white balloons floating about. I enjoyed my signature Chocolate martini (which I've also dubbed the $100 martini), the delicious bruchette and my perennial favorite - pollo arosto. I was in heaven! We pretty much closed down the restaurant, so I asked if we could take home a few balloons for Caiden. They sent us home with about a dozen and both Caiden and Jerry had tons of fun playing with them!