Nothing better than a hamster nativity set...

When I was in first grade my teacher announced that for Christmas all of the kids would be exchanging white elephant gifts with each other. I was super excited and came home to tell my mom. She explained to me that a white elephant gift was a gag gift. We found some stuff around the house and my mom sent me school with a pair of holey nylons, a pumpkin seed and this thing you throw in the fire that looked like money when it burned. I was super excited about how funny my gag gift was. When I sat down in the circle and the first kid opened their white elephat and it was a bubble gum machine I realized I might be in trouble. Why didn't the teacher explain to us that her version of a white elephant wasn't a gag gift? WHY? Anyway, the nice, smart thing to do would have been to pick my own gift so nobody else ended up with it but instead I stole that bubble gum machine and left school a happy child. I can't stop thinking about that poor little kid who left school with a pair of holey nylons. Poor child.

This year when a friend of mine invited us to an ugly sweater/white elephant party, I made sure she had gag gifts in mind when she said white elephants. Lucky for us, she did. Nothing better than ugly sweaters, good friends and joke gifts to make for a good night.

Since we live in Florida and sweaters are hard to come by, especially ugly Christmas sweaters, we had to get creative. We ended up with a nice women's Christmas vest for Tyler and a red sweater vest that I made into a Christmas one by hot glueing some velvet ribbon bows on the front and a noel decoration we found at Salvation Army for a dollar onto the back. Luckily for us, someone gave Owen a velvet sequence one peice outfit when he was born so he had the perfect outfit to wear for the occasion.

Our friends McKenzie and Luke really know how to throw a party.

 Collette thoroughly enjoyed herself (Ella loved it too)

The party was full of fantastic friends:

A full hot choclate bar: YUMMM

 Great food:

Side note: Does anything say sexy better than a christmas vest and parted hair? I think not.

 The white elephants were awesome as well. Everyone understood that they were to be gag gifts (phew) and there were some great ones to be had. Including pregnant belly paiting kit:

And the white elephant that we ended up with: A hamster nativity set.  I mean really, if any animals can play the baby Jesus, it's got to be a hamster.

This was just the beginning of our fun December. Many more blog posts about Christmas happenings to come.