When we arrived to my parents' house in White Oak, it was the first time the family was seeing Connor since his big growth spurt in the fall. He didn't quite have Grand Daddy beat in height yet, but thank goodness Grand Daddy held off on building the new set of golf clubs. Connor was now going to need a full-size adult set!
As the cousins arrived for the holiday festivities, the games were well underway. Chicken-foot dominoes is a family favorite.
On the Sunday before Christmas, our entire extended family went to church together. It was quite the reunion with our beloved home church, many of whom I hadn't seen for years and years. Our fam took up the better portion of 2 church pews! It was wonderful to see so many faces from the church family I spent 20+ years with.
After church, we headed back to my parents' house for some quick snack preparation and then we were back up to the church building for our extended family celebration. We rented the recreation room at the church in order to have enough room for everyone, which was a new tradition started last year while we were away. It turned out to be a great spot for our Morgan Family Christmas, and we were so excited to be reunited for some great holiday snacks and fun.
An added bonus of our new family tradition is that Santa himself comes to visit with the younger kiddos. Kaitlynn was feeling a bit odd about this but tried to play along. We had some family friends in our group this year and it was nice to enjoy the excitement of the little ones' when they were able to visit with Santa.
Afterwards, we made sure to get tons of photos of our cousin group. It's so hard to believe how grown up these kids are now. I think most of us still picture them in our mind's eye as little toddlers, which is quite silly when you realize that half of them are taller than the adults.
After our photo session, we all went back inside to begin the gift exchanges and games. We drew numbers for a large group gag gift exchange as well as our traditional guy/girl gift exchange, and the cousins held their own gift exchange. There are always tons of laughs and steals during these games. Robin also arranged some fun cousin games including the Saran Wrap toy/candy prizes that the kids always enjoy.
When the games concluded, the fun wasn't over for the cousins. There were lots of new toys to be played with, and then Grand Daddy had a lesson in politics for them. I have no idea what was discussed but there was some learning and quite a few laughs from that direction.
It was so nice to have the afternoon of quality family time with our extended Morgan family. We all said our goodbyes and wished everyone a safe trip home, but the Christmas fun was far from over!
No comments:
Post a Comment