chritmas eve 2010

Christmas Eve I had to work, so I didn't get home until about 7 pm....and by then my family had already started dinner. We had out traditional Christmas Eve dinner which consists of salad, garlic bread, and my Grandma's spaghetti. Now, this is not ordinary spaghetti...the sauce is just heaven. She starts cooking it the day before...and I have to live with the torture of smelling it all day (makes you very hungry).

Once I got home I ate and then we all got ready for the pinata. We always do a pinata for the kids. This year we had a few rugrats taking their shot at breaking open the pinata. The first one to go was Haley, which is Cousin C's little girl (she's about 1 and a half). She is such a cutie!!! Anyhoo, she just LOVED taking a whack at the pinata. In fact, she did not want to give up her turn. She kept chasing after the stick as it was passed onto the next person.

Haley and her daddy having a blast...check out that smile!

Then it was time for my niece's turn (Karynne). She hesitantly took the stick and then refused to hit the pinata. Her dad then came over and tried to help her...she then got very upset and ran away. We then decided to get a smaller stick for her to use so it wouldn't seem less threatening...and it also became less threatening for us adults. Little kids swinging a stick around as hard and as fast as they can...gets pretty scary. So we gave Karynne one of those wooden spoons...and she still refused.

Then it was time for little Gracie to take her turn (Cousin S's little girl who is less than 6 months old). She had help from her daddy of course. She took a couple whacks and then got very upset. We then passed the stick back to Karynne, hoping she would finally do it. She took a couple swings at it and then threw the stick clear behind her...yikes...that girl has quite the arm.

Karynne just before she threw the wooden spoon across the room

Then it was cousin H's turn. It's a good thing we had the little stick for him...he was going crazy with it. I do think, though, that the pinata beat him more than he beat the pinata.

Cousin H...kind of looks like a ninja here

Then it was cousin K's turn. He also used the wooden spoon. He began hitting it with the spoon end. About halfway through his turn he realized the spoon end was not doing much damage, so he turned it around and proceeded to try to impale the pinata. And he succeeded. He broke upen a hole in the pinata and the candy came out. Now, what we do with the candy is divide it up into ziploc bags so each kid gets an even amount of everything...that way there's not fighting.

Cousin K...sadly I didn't get any picture of his impaling action

Now comes the funny part...after everyone has their candy and it settled, Karynne goes over, picks up the stick and starts beating the pinata that was left mangled on the floor. Go figure. Afterwards we cleaned up and everyone went home.