Christmas Part V

I'm ending it here!

On the 26th, we woke up and enjoyed some of our new toys: Richard's iTouch and of course the Wii and WiiFit! We just love it. The girls' are playing it as I write, so I say if the novelty hasn't worn off in two weeks for a 2 and 4 year old, it's a good gift!

However, enjoying our gifts was short lived, as I had to finish my gift-exchange gift for the Badia family party (my mom's side of the family). I had been working on that stinking sweater for months - "the project" - and I was so relieved to have it over! Nothing like going down to the wire. We loaded up the cookies, and games, and gifts, and supplies, and girls and hit the road once again (hehe - my aunt and uncle live about 2 miles away). My mom's side of the family's meal is fantastic; it's why I claim to be Italian when really I'm a lot more German :). We had wedding soup, stuffed shells (with pork, not just plain old ricotta), meatballs w/ peas (yes, that's the third meat!) and HAM! Lol, tradition has it that the reason that Italian's have the feast of the 7 fishes is because fish is plentiful in Italy, and better meats were saved for the Christmas Meal!We also have salad and homemade rolls and sweet potatoes; I'm salivating writing this.

Moving on: last year we started a white elephant gift exchange with a twist: you have to make your own gift! We had been doing gift exchanges in the past, but they got pretty expensive, so we decided to do this, so we would still have the fun of exchanging gifts but it wouldn't be as expensive. So I got this bright idea to crochette a sweater. I'm pretty good at crochetting and made it pattern-free. I really loved it (except the sleeves weren't the best, but I ran out of time so had to make them shorter than I planned). And guess who won it: Eric! The one person who could not use it. LOL. And Kayla (his fiancee) would not be able to wear it either. So, anyway, oh well. Richard won a set of dried herbs from my mom and I won a painting that Eric did that Evelyn really wanted. It's hanging in her room. :D [It was so funny as we were leaving Tracy told Evelyn, you know I really wanted that painting, and Evelyn replied, "Well, you can come look at it in my room." Oh, too funny!]

After the gift exchange we all enjoyed each other's company by playing games: Settlers' of Catan, Wii, and more. Good times. Good times. :)