Has anyone SEEN my house this month? I obviously love the shit out of Christmas.
As a kid, as soon as December hit, I'd play my Mannheim Steamroller cassette tape over and over as I hung colored lights in my room and cut out snowflakes for my windows.
The best part of every Christmas season, other than Christmas itself, was the Cousin's Christmas Party. My aunt would put on these extravagant sleep over parties for myself and 10 other cousins, including crafts, gingerbread houses, eating contests, lots of sugar, a food fight one year, and just tons and tons and tons of fun. They are memories that I have cherished my entire life (and still watch the home videos of every Christmas), and I swore as a kid that once I grew up and had kids, I would carry on the tradition.
Sadly, my kids do not have the privilege of living anywhere near their cousins. Half of their cousins don't live in our hometown anymore anyways, and that, combined with the fact that we don't travel back home until after Christmas now (because being away from home over Christmas is just too complicated), it's just not feasibly possible to arrange a cousins Christmas party.
So what's the next best thing? Coast Guard Kids Christmas Party of course.
We completely cleared out our garage of the usual clutter (bikes, grills, teepees, you know the usual), popped up a few tables and put up some extra Christmas decorations we happened to have and invited a few families and their kids over to equate just about a dozen kids for an evening of Christmas fun.
I had bargain-shopped some 30 cent crafts at Michaels last week, so they each had a balsam wood mask and a plastic "stained glass" ornament to make. Simple, no prep and any age can do it.
 |
| A big group of Coast Guard kids! |
Over at another table were over sized snowman cookies to decorate, and upside down ice cream cones with green frosting on them to transform them into Christmas trees.
 |
| Calen and Brady making snowman cookies |
Then, we had a banana eating contest, taken right out of my aunt's book. The idea is to eat an entire banana with your hands behind you back. For all the cousins of mine reading this will remember once upon a time when Angie (at age 8 or 9?) spit up her entire banana during our contest and then ate it again. WELL GUESS WHAT. One of the kids tonight ended up spitting out his banana, but he was a gentleman and did it in our yard instead (and thus, did not re-eat it). His sister won the contest in his honor and Camden (who won last year) got 2nd place this time.
After that and a quick sprint around the block (because they were so sugared up and needed to run somewhere), we had a donut eating contest.
Because apparently the only way to get fed in the Hansen house is in a contest with your hands behind your back.
This is another oldie from the past. Suspend a string in the air (easy to do in a garage, I tied it between the opener struts), and then tie several vertical strings hanging down, and tie a donut to the end of each string. You can use any size donut as long as it has a hole, but I used minis, because SUGAR OVERLOAD.
The best part about this game is watching how ridiculous they look while they're trying to grab their donuts that are swinging around with their mouths.
 |
| The quickest way to make kids look ridiculous. LOL |
They played a bit more after that, and then came inside the house to eat pizza and watch Elf and let the sugar rush die down.
It was a great abridged version of the fantastic parties we had so many years ago. I'm glad I can give this generation of kids great memories to look back on.
No comments:
Post a Comment