Our Big Christmas Party

Christmas this year was less a single day and more like a rolling week-long party! Almost all of Scott's siblings and their families were in town together and we did all kinds of fun activities together. Skiing, laser tag, huge dinners every night, and other fun things happened! Some of the highlights of the season are featured below...

The Gingerbread House Extravaganza
On Friday, Velvet organized and prepared a gingerbread house decorating contest for everyone. It was a fun activity for all ages. Everyone divided into teams and chose a team name for their project.

The Paskin family decorated together under the team name, "All Asking." Joshua Paskin and Isaac temporarily set aside their ongoing grudge match to decorate a house together -- each of them decorated a side. They named their team "Nerdy Houses."

Samuel Paskin was boldly independent as "The Gingerbread Construction Company." Tiffany and Velvet supervised while taking video and photos of all the crews. David and Coral plied their artistic skills as "Team Awesome."

Joel was the first captain to choose a team. He chose Emerald and Dallin to be his assistants and allowed Emerald to help choose their team name: "Horses Christmas." Dallin fell asleep before the contest, and ended up missing all the activity. (Although he did get to see the judging of the finished houses later.) In the photo, only the top of Joel's head is visible behind Emerald.

Jessalyn continued her quest to be the favorite cousin by helping Samantha, Aysha, and Annabelle create an artistic masterpiece under the name "Girl Power." I suspect that Velvet helped with suggesting their team name.

Meredith, Sandy and Nicole created the "Pretty Princesses" gingerbread castle.

The finished projects form a Gingerbread Village.

Grand Dad did the judging, while participants watched with bated breath.

We all won! Yay!

Here are the official awards:

Most likely to attract reindeer

The best use of candy

Most likely to be eaten by Christmas

The strongest house

Most yummy

Most silly

Best in "snow"

Christmas Eve Sleepover
After all that excitement, Santa worried that the children would be tempted to keep each other awake and spy him coming to bring the presents. So the moms and dads came up with a clever plan -- we put all the kids to sleep at our house and sent Santa to Gran and Grand Dad's house with all the presents. Some of the girls were very worried that Santa would get confused, but he didn't!

Before bed, favorite cousin Jessalyn directed and arbitrated a heated game of Doodle Dice among all the girls. (Dallin just supervised.)

She must have done a good job -- almost everyone is smiling!

Christmas Morning
Early the next morning, the Christmas buses rolled out for Christmas Land at Gran and Grand Dad's house. Well, not too early -- it was almost 9:00 before all the sleepers were up and ready to go.

The first stop was the upstairs living room, where Grand Dad read Luke Chapter 2 to all of his grandchildren, except Judd, Nathan, and Jack, who weren't able to come to Pocatello this year, and were sadly missed.

All the kids sat in quiet awe (or sleepy stupor?) as Grand Dad read.

Coming Downstairs
Then... Everyone go downstairs! Form a line! Littlest ones and their helpers first! Well, just go down carefully and don't fall!

Wow, look at all those presents!

The Gift Event!

Gran and Grand Dad's downstairs play room was transformed into an efficient present-opening station. Chairs lined the walls for grown-ups to watch the unwrapping, and for children to wait for their turns while playing with their gifts. A low table in the center of the room was the spotlight area for two or three children at a time to open their gifts and receive barrages of photographs and videos. The present event lasted from 9:30 until 2:00 with a short break for lunch.

All of the kids had so much fun opening presents and watching cousins open presents. There were so many gifts, and everyone had a great party!

By far the most impressive gifts were hand-made by David and Meredith, who have started a leather-crafting company called Rose and Thorn. The Paskin boys show off their personalized leather armor, and Meredith shows off her leather-working muscles.

Just Dance for Kids Wii game -- all right! Dancing is our favorite activity!

Gran and Grand Dad enjoyed the place of honor, watching grand kids enjoy their many gifts.

It was awesome!

What a great party! Adults and kids alike enjoyed a really fun and happy Christmas day.