Christmas Eve 2011 Will Be Different This Year...

We've decided to try something different for Christmas eve this year. First of all, we're going to make our cookies starting at about 12:30 Saturday, instead of doing them beforehand. Our gift opening is going to be vastly different from any other year, too. Here's how that's going to work:

1. I am going to take everyone's cell phone and set an alarm on each one for a random time. 
2. At Noon, I will chose a gift for each of the 5 kiddos to open. They will all take turns opening their gift.
3. From then on, when a kiddo's alarm goes off, they will chose one gift for themselves, and one gift for each other child to open.
4. This will happen 4 more times, and each kiddo will have one turn to do the gift choosing.
5. After all of the alarms have gone off, Steve will choose one last gift for each kiddo to open. 

We are hoping that this method will make their Christmas joy last a bit longer. The last alarm will go off by 4 P.M.; that way we have a break before we sit down together at 6 to begin opening all of the gifts that are not from Santa.


Food for the day is going to be a bunch of everyone's favorite snacky things and breakfast will be Cinnamon Rolls. I'm sure I will blog again about how well this did or did not work :)