Dec. 7, 2009 - Holiday Parties

For a quarter of a century we have been having family get-togethers at Christmas time. For the first decade or so we held our gatherings on Christmas Eve. We took turns hosting our gatherings, but in the past few years they were held at my sister's house, because the family grew so much, her house was the only one that was large enough to hold them. As the family grew, we started having the party on the Sunday before Christmas, it was more convenient that way.

There is always tons of food, everyone brings something. Since my nephew has a lot of food allergies, the one rule about the meal was no peanuts. My sister bakes banana bread just for him every year. I usually bake and decorate tons of different kinds of cookies, I'm going to start this week baking for the party. We all have our specialties, fresh baked breads, pies, penne, aux gratin potatoes, and all kinds of side dishes, jellos, salads, cheese and vegetable platters, etc. The host supplies the meat, usually a ham and some other kinds of meats.

My sister sets up a table for the kids to make crafts,


and brings out the big box of Legos she has from when her kids were young,


The older boys are usually downstairs watching movies and playing games or out in the garage playing pinball.
I'm usually running around trying to get pictures of everybody. There is usually at least one new family member that I have to get pictures of. There are three new additions this year, two births and one marriage. If our family gets much bigger, we'll have to rent a hall for our Christmas party.