Traditions

As taken from Sarah's blog:

In Colorado we used to throw a Thanksgiving dinner and late night party for all our friends because many did not have family and/or enjoyed getting together. Looking back those parties were a lot of fun! I miss hosting those events and getting everyone together and all the goofy stuff that would happen. Since living in Washington we don't really have the demand for a Thanksgiving party, so instead we are going to be the guests at someone elses house. The tables are turned! In exchange for eating all of Rebecca's parents grub (we are going to their house in Tacoma) we are going to help string the Cmas lights and decorate the outside of the house. I'm actually looking forward to it.

For Cmas, we will host a small party at our house for HG, the Hub, RB MBA, and TJ. I'm looking forward to this because we are going to make a big ol ham dinner and make egg nog from scratch. This year we are all strapped for cash, so we are doing a secret santa (to be picked from a hat at Thanksgiving) that we will open gifts for on our Cmas party night.

Actual Cmas celebration between Dane and I has evolved into a game. Since we never did agree on Cmas eve or Cmas opening of gifts and we couldn't come up with a satisfactory formula for opening "half" on Cmas eve, we decided to play a game on Cmas eve. The game:

Adapted from Cranium
1) Select gift from under the tree, any gift.
2) Roll dice to see which type of question to answer, if blue, you get to chose another gift from the open floor.
3) If you answer the question correctly, you get to open your gift. If not, the gift goes to the discard pile.
4) A player can chose to sacrafice opening their gift and pull a gift from the discard pile for the other to open.

That's basically it. It's pretty fun for us and makes the time go by fast. I wonder how this tradition will adapt over the years and if we can even adapt it to play different games.

This year for New Years we plan to go to a Sonics-Celtics game and then watch the fireworks on the Needle. It will be a relatively inexpensive way to celebrate as Dane and I have no T&E money till April and I have a very limited play budget. So far I've stayed under control, though not under budget. And my Old Navy trip on Saturday wasn't in the budget. Oh well, I got some cute stuff.