Tradtional Christmas?

Tradition! The holiday season always brings family traditions... some traditions are old, a little boring, and need to be replaced, once in a while we have a new tradition that we are starting that year! There are traditions that I will not be doing when I have my own family and others that I will for-sure teach my kids! There are those special traditions that you cannot wait until next year to do them again! One of those fun traditions my family has is on Christmas Eve!

At my house the 24th of December mean pinata night
Every Christmas Eve the Althouse family and the Krogh Family (across the street) brave the snow and cold to have some fun smashing open a pinata! It is always so much fun... and who doesn't enjoy free candy!?

Each family provides a pinata full of candy! The Krogh's made their pinata this year! It's a frog and it turned out great! Kristin and I pick out our pinata! Her name is Florence!It is fun to watch the little kids hitting it as hard as they can, then your turn to take a wack at it, the candy spilling out which is then proceeded by everyone running to get the BEST kind of candy!

It was sad to see Florence get beat on... Kristin Florence and I had become such good friends in the 6 hours we had her! Yes it was sad seeing her get dented but the worst part was she was decapitated!!! it was so sad! (We were mourning her death Christmas morning when we looked on our porch. We were pleased to find Florence's head! We took her inside and she is now hanging on our christmas tree so everything is fine and dandy)The whole pinata clan! Christmas morning! (The pictures are going to be VERY VERY limited... it was quite early in the morning)

Our Christmas Treewe took LOADS of pictures waiting for the parents to get up! These two are the most decent :)

:) it was a wonderful christmas morning... but strange in a non-traditional way. It is weird not to have Michael there with us. Last Christmas we had FOUR extra people at our house for Christmas! We invited four of the missionaries in the area to join us! It was SO much fun playing games and such with them! It was a DRASTIC change to go from 5 guys one year to 0 guys the next!

:) it was a wonderful christmas afternoon... but strange in a non-traditional way. Mike called!!! We talked to him for two and a half hours! it was sooo good to talk to him again. When he called every got onto a different phone in the house so we were all on at the same time. Well this confused Mike a bit. He couldn't tell Dianne Kristin and I apart when we talked... it was so funny. (We get that all the time! Every single time one of us answers the phone we are always ALWAYS mistaken for someone else. it makes it very easy for us to play pranks on people ;)
:) it was a wonderful christmas night... but strange in a non-traditional way. it's "tradition" to go to my Grandparent's house in Layton after we open our presents. With Christmas falling on a Saturday it messed everything up. My Dad and I had meetings we had to be to the following day. So we decided to hold out Evans Christmas party the DAY AFTER, which has never happened before. So we stayed at home all of Christmas! It was different but good :)
I don't know what we should call the Christmas of 2010... it sure wasn't a traditional Christmas but none the less the christmas spirit was there and that is what makes this time of year special! All-in-all it was a wonderful non-traditional day.