Blackburn Family Christmas Party

Saturday, December 19th--OOPS, I'm back tracking a little! We held our annual Blackburn Family Christmas Party at a building my Aunt Manya works at in West Valley. It has a HUGE meeting room along with a huge kitchen, places to keep our meals hot and places to keep it cold. There is just everything we need without anyone having to host at their homes and put tons of work into it. We love it! It was my sister, Alishia's, turn to host and she decided to do a theme for our white elephant gift exchange. Normally we are all given a dollar amount and we all just buy something unisex then play the white elephant game. This year Alishia asked everyone to buy As-Seen-On-TV gifts. Oh my goodness! It was crazy! We all thought someone would buy a Snuggie so NO ONE did! Too funny! There were 3 of those brownie pans with dividers, 2 or 3 Touch & Brush's and quite a few other things. I decided to pick the gift I brought, something I usually don't do, and so I got the brownie pan and the Touch & Brush. Nate got some dryer balls, Magic Putty and a windshield cleaner-type thing (I wish I could remember the names!). So far we've tried out the dryer balls and they work okay and put the Touch & Brush in the kids bathroom. It would be a great thing for adults but my kids still manage to get toothpaste all over! Ug!
All the kids under 16 we draw names for. My niece, Samantha, had Brady's name. She and my sis, Alishia, had been told by Brady a while back that he wanted a remote control dinosaur. They found a huge remote control dinosaur after Thanksgiving, it's pretty cool, I must admit. When Brady opened it the first thing he said was, "This is nice but it's not the one I wanted." Wha' what?!?! Whatever one he wanted was not nearly as cool as this one and we had to spend time explaining this to him. It was the hot item of the night as plenty of the adults played with it too! My cousin, Catherine, had Elise's name. She, and her mom, my Aunt Maureen, got Elise some bead sets to make necklaces and bracelets out of. She loved them quite a bit and would have been happy to open them up and start making some things right there but I told her it could end up being too messy with beads everywhere so she was happy to take over the remote control dinosaur! We had Catherine and Samantha names. Catherine had given me a specific request a while back. She complained her mom never buys junk food so she just wanted me to get her some junk food. So I did and she was the happiest person in that room! For Samantha, we got her a Toys R Us gift card and some As-Seen-On-TV hair clips she had wanted (not those crazy Bump-Its! ha ha ha).
We had a delicious dinner of spiral ham, funeral taters, salads and delicious desserts from Costco. It was, as usual, a wonderful night! We don't all get together that often but when we do there is plenty of fun to be had! Next get-together is a baby shower for my cousin, Carly. Baby Chandler is due in March---hoooray!
When we were done we packed up our car and went to a residential street in Taylorsville where all the houses are decked out to the story of "Twas the Night Before Christmas". It was a spectacular sight! There were about 20 homes that participated and all of them had lights galore and plenty of decorations in their yards. (I SOOOO wish we could do that on our street!) Once done with that we headed home and went to bed shortly after. It was a long day but VERY FUN! We look forward to next year and being able to host! Any "theme" ideas for our white elephant gift exchange are greatly appreciated! ; )
***I'm totally bummed we forgot to take photos! If anyone else did, please email me some so I can post 'em here! Thanks!