Christmas recap

Hope everyone had a lovely Christmas yesterday! It snuck up on us a bit this year since we were preoccupied with the sudden need to move, but we had a very special one.

We stayed over at Dave & Bonnie's for Christmas eve - so we were ready first thing in the morning for Bonnie's delicious homemade cinnamon buns. We enjoyed opening our stockings and trading secret Santa presents - I didn't make a list of course, but if I had, everything that I unwrapped would have been on it! "Santa" (Jamie) is a very thoughtful gift giver!

After a little time lolling about in the afternoon we left to drive to Ian & Christine's for dinner and by then it was snowing! It amounted to a few centimetres and was such a lovely, swirlingly pretty festive touch. It made driving a little bit slower too, but it was worth it! A white Christmas is a rarity in Vancouver - no complaining here. Dinner was excellent and the jokes in the Christmas crackers seemed (ever so slightly) better this year.

Of course the coup de grace of the night is the gag gift exchange - the new family favourite for about five years running. Lots of laughter and gift stealing, plotting and mock revenge too. Of course my personal favourite is seeing who got the gifts we put in...

The best had to be Ian getting a framed photo of the nightmare-inducing New Year's baby, a creepy old doll from the antique store who is still resting at our place after making an appearance in the exchange for the last two years in a row. It was hilarious to hear Ian exclaiming his relief for not getting the baby again (he got it the first year then I got it last year) but in the end that made it so much funnier. I've made money off that photo on iStock!

And our other gift ended up in Todd's hands - the "romance" kit, including terribly cheap and undrinkable "champagne", a instruction book on wooing from the '30s entitled How to Make Love, some smoked oysters, a cinnamon candle and some heinous grocery store cologne.

I'm sure someone, somewhere will put some of these items to good use! And if not, there's always regifting for next year...