We alternate doing gifts and donations every year. Last year we drew names and did a gift exchange, so this year we were on to donations. Everyone selects a charity and an amount to donate, and then we put together a tournament of games. The winner of the tournament takes all the money in the pot and donates it to the charity of their choice and gets the tax receipt for it. Such a fun way to get together, spend quality time, and do something positive! I highly recommend it!! I also love that we alternate years, because it is fun to give gifts as well.
Of course our kids were still completely spoiled! Oh my goodness. We still have another Christmas gathering with Dave's family and Dom's birthday this week. What are we going to do with all this stuff?!?! So blessed!
Everyone came over for a "light" dinner of soup, pasta and salad, and then we ate appetizers and cheese & crackers throughout the rest of the night. We split the gifts for the kids up throughout the evening since their attention spans are short.
Picture overload of the kids opening some of their gifts...
Emilia was glued to me most of the evening, but since I didn't have to worry about food or anything else I just relished in the mother/daughter time :)
No one better to teach Dom about all the tools in his new tool set!
Helping Aunty Ashleigh open the puzzle box with his new drill :)
This kid is above average with is puzzle abilities, I'm sure of it! He loves them, and got a few puzzles for Christmas already (yay! I love puzzle and book gifts), and every time I'm surprised with how quickly he "gets" it.
Checking out my fun Christmas earrings!
Ugh her bum is so cute <3 haha!
So emotional about him turning 3 this week!
Nice big brother bringing Emilia her gifts
I can't get over his face. He was pretty much this excited about every gift. This is when he unwrapped the hockey sticks from Uncle Jeff & Aunty Marta! He later got some plastic ones from Aunty Candy that are probably better suited for indoor play haha! Make me less nervous about people's heads, shins, and my walls!
Emilia playing with her magnatiles in the background:)
Slap shot!
Jump in like a minute to actually see the reveal; the rest is just Dom squealing and being excited haha.
And the big gift of the evening... Dom's "new white BMW!" He was so overwhelmed when this was brought upstairs. He spent the whole next day walking around it, wiping it down with a cloth, inspecting it, sitting in it, listening to music in it... He's still too nervous to drive it, but I'm good with that right now haha! So fancy!
He's been very very good about sharing with Emilia. She, however, has a full fit every time we have to take her out of it to give Dom another turn, or to eat. haha
I don't know if they knew this when they bought it, but this is the same kind of car he sat in at the dealership when we went a year(?) ago and Dave made that video.
After the kids went to bed we got going with our games.
Game 1: Salad Bowl (Boys v. Girls)
Salad bowl is a fun, goofy game to play with a group! Everyone puts some quotes, words, whatever they want written on a piece of paper into a bowl. Literally whatever you want...
The group alternates Team 1/2 around circle. Set a timer for 1 minute, and pull a paper out of the bowl.
Round 1: Using any words except those on the paper, try to get your team to guess what the sheet says (ex. Hakuna Matata - could say, Timon & Pumbaa's motto). Once timer goes off, count how many you got, and pass the bowl on to the next team. Keep going until the bowl is empty and all the sheets have been guessed. Put all the sheets back in the bowl.
Round 2: Using only actions (charades style), get your team to guess the quote/word. (ex. PIVOT! - act out pivoting). Put all the sheets back in the bowl.
Round 3: Using only ONE WORD, get your team to guess what the sheet says. Everyone is pretty familiar with the papers by now, so it's more a matter of quickly selecting your one word and not accidentally saying "Um", as that counts as a word!
At the end, whichever team got the most correct, moved on to the next game! In this case, the boys won.
Game 2: Shuffleboard
Each person got two turns, and the we used their highest score. The top two people moved on to our third and final game...
Game 3: Beer Pong
Beer Pong!! Haha. We thought it would be fun to have the final two people face off in beer pong, and bring in a guest teammate. It was down to Scott & Adam. Scott chose David as his teammate, and everyone fully expected Adam to choose Jeff. Adam said, "Well... since Scott chose Dave, I feel it is my brotherly duty to choose... Renee!" How unexpected! Word got out that I am occasionally randomly good at beer pong. Thank goodness I lived up to the hype that game! I scored some pretty awesome shots and definitely held my own. I helped lead Adam to the tournament victory, and the Downtown East Side Women's Shelter was gifted the charitable donation from the evening!
The rest of the evening was spent visiting, playing some more casual beer pong, and then we finally got to bed around 1230.
We all got a gift from Oma D, which included these pouches to hold jewelry for travel. Genius! Adam decided it looked like a hat, so we all put them on to send this picture to Oma. We look like jars of jam, which is quite fitting since our initials together spell out JARS.
Regrettably no pictures of Salad Bowl, as some of those acting shots could have been hilarious.
I don't have pictures of the official tournament finale, but we did get Dad in there to play a game after, too. So fun! *We played with water, so it wasn't actually a sloppy college game of beer pong*
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