Merry Christmas! (Part 1)

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and enjoyed spending time with their families! I know we had three days to celebrate because of it being on a weekend, but time flew by. I didn't even get in a Christmas nap! haha

After working Thursday and Friday last week, I still had to buy groceries to make mini cheesecakes for Christmas. I wanted to get up early Saturday and do them all but I was making a triple recipe and they needed to chill for a couple of hours. So I stayed up Friday night until they were all done. If that's what it feels like to get off at 6 and come home and cook for children and put them to bed, then I'm not ready for that at all. I was worn out! The tripled recipe should have produced 72 cheesecakes, but I ended up with 57. And 12 more were burned and thrown away. So I came really close to the right number!

I woke up on Saturday and put the cherries on all the cheesecakes, got the gifts separated and packed for all our stops, and off we went! My mom's side of the family was first on the list. There was soup, shrimp, a cheese ball, sausage dip, cheesecakes, lemon meringue pie, coconut pie, spiced pecans, pimento cheese, ham, turkey, pickles, cheese, meatballs, chips, pigs in a blanket, and I can't remember what else. It was all so good!

We had to be at Matthew's aunt's about 6 p.m. They had even more food, but I didn't eat anything there. Then all the gifts were passed out to the kids. This year we begged to play dirty santa, and we did! I think everyone enjoyed it (because we got a lot of thank you's for coming up with the idea). We had a $5-$7 limit which isn't much, but some of the gifts were pretty good! There was a pack of charmin, a sign with a Bible verse on it, coasters, a fleece throw, a picture frame, a lot of candy, a massage set, a bottle of wine, a movie, a money jar, a gardening tool, and a tv remote caddy. I ended up with the fleece throw and Matthew got the massage set. Somehow everyone started joking that it was a sex toy, but it's not and that's disgusting and the dang thing was made out of wood. Pretty sure nobody is using that for any purpose other than a massage. But everyone had fun playing dirty santa, so we are doing it again next year!

Afterwards, we went over to my parents so I could fill all of the stockings. That's one of my favorite things to do! I am a master of stuffing stockings. But I even shocked myself at how much I fit in my mom's haha. I know the thing weighed at least 10 pounds!