Christmas Eve--Part 1!

Our Christmas Eve is usually a bigger day of celebration than our Christmas Day. We had appetizers at 2pm. Duff and I learned about two families that could benefit from some Christmas Cheer. One family of 5 and one family of 4. Nine total and there are nine of us. So I wrote all the names and ages on a paper, and each of us drew one out of a basket. Shaun offered a prayer as we got ready to go, and then we piled in the cars and headed for Target. Everyone had $20 and 20 minutes to gather gifts for our names. An interesting thing happened: we all spent more than 20 minutes, but that was because we all ended up chipping in more than the $20. It is such a contagious thing to 'give' to someone. Here are some pictures of our Target Adventure.
Me with some goodies.
Christine with a lot of Spiderman items.

Josh and Meredith ready to go.

Meredith, Christine, and Natalie met up to brainstorm.

Josh and Mere checking out.

Shaun, Mike, and Adrianne checking out.

Natalie, Josh, Shaun, Mike and Adrianne finishing up.

Mike and Natalie deciding.

Mike and Christine finishing up. After dinner, the guys did all the dishes and we ladies went upstairs to my room and wrapped. It was fun and festive to work together to get things ready to be delivered. All the girls passing paper, tape, ribbon, tags, scissors, pens; laughing and making memories.

We went at 10:30pm to do the 'deliveries'. We piled in 2 cars and drove to the first house. Shaun and Christine ran up to the porch and left the gifts. Then realized they didn't ring the bell while we driving away. We called the front car, circled around and went back. Shaun ran up and rang it several times and then high-tailed it back to the car around the corner. Off to the next house--an apartment with a security gate! Dilemma: how to get in! Waited for a few minutes and followed a Santa in a Corvette in. Christine and Josh ran up the stairs, dinged and ditched and we scattered fast! It is one of the highlights of our season to do Secret Santa.