Christmas Eve

We went to church on Sunday morning.  We sang Gesu Bambino with all our family during the sacrament meeting of Sam and Audrey's ward.  Since church was only the first hour on Christmas Eve, we also then stayed for the sacrament meeting of Daniel and Ashley's ward.  

Later, we had a big feast for dinner at Audrey and Sam's house.  We got to video chat with Nathan for a little bit, but I felt bad for him because they didn't have anything for dinner that night.  The member meal that was supposed to come that evening didn't make it until lunch the next day.  Their stove ran out of fuel or something so they couldn't cook anything until they got that re-filled the next day.  I was feeling guilty for our big feast when they had nothing.  

We had a fun Christmas Eve.  Audrey and Sam have a tradition of doing a puppet show.  They give about 30 minutes for everyone to make a puppet of one of the characters or props in the story.  Then Sam reads the story while doing a live video feed to FaceBook.  There's no practicing and only a short time to make the puppets.  This year was Charlie Brown's Christmas.  

After the puppet show, the tradition is to do a candy game, which is pretty hilarious.  Everyone brings a wrapped candy bar or candy, which also has an envelope with a random amount of money in it.  It's white elephant style for choosing a candy to un-wrap.  The unwrapped candy can be stolen up to 3 times before it's locked (the person gets to keep it without being stolen again).  At the end, everyone then opens their envelope to see what money they received along with their candy.  We had some creative wrapping, with at least one of them wrapped multiple times.  Noah had to unwrap several layers (and I didn't even get the final candy on video).  Hazel opened up gummy hotdogs, which were hilarious.  Papa actually stole those from Hazel, and then Evelyn stole them from Papa.  

Savannah wasn't happy to lose her Sour Punch straws right at the end to Ashley (who went first).  I ended up offering my "Sour Patch Kids" candy to her in exchange for Watermelon Sour Patch, but when Ashley realized that Savannah was really sad, she just gave the Sour Punch back to her.  It turns out that my "Sour Patch Kids" was just the box with other candy inside.  So Savannah would have been really upset with the contents.  I had tried to give Ashley the "Sour Patch Kids" but she knew what the contents were since they were the ones who wrapped that one up.  The joke came back around to her!  She actually wouldn't take any of the candy back, so I ended up with a Million Dollar chocolate bar AND the watermelon sour punch, and Savannah got the Sour Punch Straws.  Alex ended up with a giant Reeses Peanut Butter cup bars.  I'm not sure what candy ended up where, but there was also a giant Kit Kat Bar going around. 

Alison and Micah both ended up getting a $20 bill with their candy.  The whole thing was quite hilarious!