Saturday, December 18, 2004

Christmas Family Fellowship

Well I just returned home from a fun filled night of hanging out with the fam (a.k.a. the "collective"). There were 15 of us all together at my aunt and uncle's house up at Stouffville and Yonge. It is always an interesting time when we all get together (mostly because we're all loud and have a lot to say, so you can only imagine haha).

My highlights of the evening mostly revolve around my two and a half year old cousin Joseph. He is most definitly the family entertainer, and he knows it! He had me absolutely killing myself laughing when at one point, he let out a huge belch, covered his mouth, and then yelled in a high pitched voice "oh my!" Then he had the whole family splitting their sides when out of no where he started running around the living room, and then the kitchen in circles, yelling "happy dance! happy dance!" and none of us have any idea where he picked this one up! (He's a nut, but he fits right in!)

The most eventful part of our evening though was the gingerbread house making competition. We had two sets of pieces to build two houses, so it turned into a bit of a challenge between two teams. Dionne, Jocelyn and myself took one house, while Donna, Bradley and my Aunt Mel took the other. It got pretty competitive when Bradley tried to sabotage our chimney after theirs wouldn't stay on, and all Di kept yelling was "we need another orange smartie stat!" An icing fight even broke out between multiple people and it became a little bit of a mass chaos. I ended up with more icing on me then was on our gingerbread house, but I have no one to blame but myself as I cut the whole in the icing package just a tad too big.

As our evening died down, we sipped hot apple cider and listened to a recording of "O Holy Nightmare" that my uncle got from someone (it's a man very whole heartedly singing "O Holy Night"..but unfortunately, God did not bless this man with the ability to sing..at all...).

Overal the evening was an awesome one. Just fellowship between family members, and lots of memories and laughs shared. Isn't that one of the greatest things about this holiday season though? Just having an excuse to get together with lots of close family and friends and just enjoy each others company. Something about this time of year gives you that feeling inside that you just want to be close to all those that you love, and spend some good quality time together. It's one of my favourite things that happen at Christmas anyways (next to having an opportunity to celebrate and remember the birth of Jesus Christ of course!)

Does anyone else have any family Christmas stories or traditions they'd like to share? Either from this year or years past? I'd love to hear them, so share away!

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