Christmas Eve party!

Tonight we had our annual Cowan-Starr Compound Christmas Eve party.

Grandma, Buddy, Mark, and all Brian's whole family came over.

Enjoying snacks ...

The first game we played was the "say something nice" game.

This involved a name exchange.  Each of us had to write three nice things about one other person.  Then I read the nice things aloud, and we tried to guess who they were about!

Everyone humored me and participated!

Next we moved on to Pictionary!

Maya made this very nice drawing, then turned around, smiled sweetly, and said, "You see?  It's a star!"

Gabe's word was "ornament."

Max was drawing his own clues in the bottom corner.

Next the kids went on a hunt with clues that Mom created.  The first was a Grinch hunt, and when they got to the end they got dog biscuits!  The next was a Santa hunt, and the prize at the end of that was chocolate-covered marshmallow Santas!

Then the kids decorated some cupcakes ...

... then ate them!

The whole time they kept asking repeatedly, "When can we open presents?"

I made this wall so we could measure all the kids' heights on it, and let them all draw pictures on it.  Then I'll roll it up and put it up again next year, so they can compare heights and drawing styles.

Finally they got their presents (the kids opened their gifts to each other).  Gabe got this awesome scooter from Joe, Maya and Nathan.

They all seemed pretty pleased with what they got ...

I was trying to take a picture of the kids, but Brian rode by on the scooter the instant the camera fired, so all I got is this shot of his backside.

We had a lot of fun!

When the kids left, we let Gabe open the present he's been begging to open for a couple of weeks now ...

Knowing what it was did not temper his giddy reaction!

This is NRG, whom you might remember from ...

Gabe's artwork.

Well, hang your stockings and say your prayers ...

Guess who's coming!