After wrapping up our Morgan Family holiday visit, it was time for us to head back home to meet up with Collin and Kevin for our Courtright Family Christmas! We have various traditions from over the years, but from time to time we change things up to keep it interesting. This year, we kicked off the family fun with our usual Christmas breakfast while opening our family stockings. It's always so fun to see all the goodies in the stockings, stuffed and overflowing!
Next up, we like to exchange wrapped presents, and this is where I tried to get a little creative this year. One of my colleagues had mentioned a fun game she plays with her kids where she wraps all the presents but only marks them with various numbers, and then her family has to try to guess which presents belong to which person based on the labeled numbers. I thought I would try that this year to see how it went. When it was time to hand out gifts, I told Jeff and the kids to try to figure out which gifts belonged to each person by reading the numbers. I felt like most of the numbers were pretty obvious - such as the birth date or birth year - but there were a few interesting ones that took some time. Probably the one that took the longest was 17, which was the number of years Jeff and I have been married, so it was HIS gift. Other ones that stumped the kids were 11 and 13, Collin and Kevin's graduation years. It only took a few minutes for all the gifts to be sorted and handed out, but it was a fun twist that I'll probably try to recreate next year in a similar game.
Everyone was excited and happy with all the gifts, but there was one gift in particular that was going to require a lot of time and effort to enjoy - Connor's new ping pong table! Without hesitation, he began laying out all the parts in the garage and assembling the table step by step. He had a little help from the family along the way, but I couldn't help to crack up when Collin and Kevin pulled up some camping chairs and just watched the assembly chaos unfold while Connor, Jeff, and Kaitlynn finished up the table. After all, what are brothers for, ha! When it was finished, the ping pong table was a perfect addition to the Courtright garage with lots of intense games ahead!
As much fun as we had during our Courtright Family Christmas, the real holiday fun was just beginning. On the day after our family celebration, we all packed up and left the country for our next family adventure!
