Family Traditions

One of our longest continuous family traditions is the family photo that we take on Christmas day (or whenever we celebrate Christmas together). I think I remember the first one we did was taken at my grandparent's house on Christmas Eve. It would have been in the early 90s. But it wasn't until ten years after that that it became an official tradition.

In the last few years the kids have gotten more involved in the process. They used to be satisfied with just pushing the camera button. Now they have progressed to coordinating the whole shot. Last year C was in charge. This year it was J's turn (she's the one with her hand on her hip.) Little J is excited that he is in charge for the 2013 photo. 

There was a lot of rearranging of people before we got to this arrangement. But everyone was still smiling by the end, so all is well.

Our newest tradition is the way we open gifts. Last year we started a fun guessing game. The first person gets a package, they guess what is in in and then pick the next person to receive a package. 

If you guess correctly what is inside the box, you get a point. 

I got one point for this one....because my sister had already opened the exact same thing. :) I'm not very good at the guessing game. Two years in a row I have failed to correctly guess the NCIS dvds that I received. And I knew I was getting them.

Little J was the official "hander outer." He made sure to keep everyone on track with announcing who the next gift opener was. Then he ran back to the tree to find them a package.

As soon as the girls opened their gift from gma and gpa, they were so excited about playing with them that they did not worry about helping with handing out the gifts. They left it all to Little J.

 My BIL did not guess correctly when he opened his roll of embroidered toilet paper. Yep, that's some fancy toilet paper.

My sis did get points for this frame. But she did not correctly guess the print that goes in it. She started crying when she read the print out load to us. You can check it out here: http://www.joelfelix.com/a-parents-promise/

My bro played along with the game better this year than last.


And check out this beautiful one of a kind wrapping paper created just for me. 

This year we ended the fun day with a game of Sorry. Little J learned that grandma takes her game playing very seriously. Her grandkids (or anyone else) does not get any special favors. Little J stuck out the many returns to Start and was the winner. 

*****
Despite the fact that some of my family members gripe about our traditions, I think they really like them but they like giving me a hard time even better.