Favorite Tradtions {Part 1}

(I hope that there will be a part 2 and 3 to this post, but I am not promising anything.)

Tonight we had our Andrus family Christmas party. It is always one that I look forward to. A while ago, we decided to stop drawing names and giving cousin presents and started doing a white elephant gift exchange. We all went to the dollar store and got a gift. One person starts and picks a present and then it can be stolen twice before it becomes safe.

One year there was this velvet rose, and my cousin Isaiah had it. My brother Dan (who is 5 or so years older) took the rose from Isaiah. Since it was a rose, he thought it would be fine to steal, but we got the opposite reaction and Isaiah started crying. It was so funny, and is the joke of the family now.

For the past few years, we have changed our present swap to a $5 food item. It's always fun to watch and see what the big hit items are each year. (Sams Club muffins, jumbo bag of Swedish fish, chocolate covered raisins, etc.)

This year Bob thought of his present early, he got 2 six packs of the bottled pop. He got Strawberry Crush and Cream Soda. I picked out the jumbo bag of Pretzel M&M's. This year we started out with youngest and went up to the oldest. The soda got picked early and was stolen until safe before we hit the 12-15 year olds. 

Someone else also brought the same M&M's as us, and I got them. Bob came home with a container of popcorn. He sure wished he could've brought home his pop.

Andrea and Brent: They got 2 awesome presents, M&M's and Gum.

 Bob and I with ours, Bob lovin on his popcorn, haha.  Andrea and I are twins with our M&Ms.

 Laken and Mike! Laken brought the chips, so she was happy to reclaim them. And she also wanted the goldfish for Mike's lunches. haha.