Christmas, Part 2

Day 2 - Campana Christmas Eve

My family members are big fans of traditional themed holiday meals.  We eat corn beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's Day, pork and sauerkraut on New Years Day, and so on.  Our Italian tradition on Christmas Eve is to eat Spaghetti (with your choice of regular marinara or tuna marinara!), Shrimp, Smelt, and Salad.  I know you are wondering what smelt is.  Go ahead, click on it.  Christmas Eve dinner is probably my favorite meal of the year; definitely during the holidays.

After dinner, we open gifts.  The cousins exchange names, so everyone just buys for one other person.  Another of my favorite traditions!

Refreshment break.  Cute baby alert.

My cousins tried to teach Maris the pouty lip.  It came out more like Zoolander.

Maris fits right in with the blondies.  15 of 19 cousins have blonde hair!  That's got to be some weird statistical anomaly, right?

After the cousins did some gift exchanging, it was Grandma Great's turn.  She had a busy year.  She visited grandkids in Colorado, California, and Oklahoma.  G'ma Great doesn't fly.  She made all those visits as part of road trips!  Road trips in your 80s.  That's fantastic.  While she was in Denver, she climbed a few mountains. 

"Getting this high is illegal in most states."

Luckily we got home much closer to bedtime.  My kids don't quite understand getting up early for Santa yet, so we got a nice long night of sleep!  Merry Christmas Eve!