Christmas Eve...White Elephant Gift Exchange!

After the Zoo Lights we headed over to Nana's house for a yummy dinner and then some fun times with a White Elephant Gift Exchange.  I love having Christmas Eve at Nana's house it always reminds me of when I was a kid.

Nana & Gabe

We gave Nana & Grandpa Jim some framed pictures of the kids and I made some books for them of pictures and events from 2011.  They loved them!

I absolutely LOVE these pictures.  This is what I always did as a kid.  Nana likes to remind me that I did this so I helped Abby out and then called Nana over to see.  The only difference was that Abby wouldn't eat them, she stuck her finger in MY mouth for me to eat them.  LOL

Now it's time for some fun with White Elephants...

This one was great!  When we came up with the gift certificate idea for a gift we thought that it would be funny to see who would get it and what they would say.  We thought it would be even more funny if Mindi happened to get that gift because she is the only one in the family that would actually use it.  When it was her turn to go pick a gift she kept hovering over that one and another one and finally decided on our gift.  To her surprise it was a gift certificate for her tattoo that she has been wanting.  She was so excited and just couldn't believe it!

Another one of our gifts that we came up with was a picture of Vinnie looking "bad" with it made out to his "#1 Fan" and autographed.  We framed it and included a $10 in the back of the frame.  Here is the picture that we used.

Mia was the one that got this gift and didn't look to pleased at what she had received.  Later down the line of opening and exchanging gifts, Noah took the picture from Mia leaving her to open a new gift.

When we were finished opening gifts we made our announcement that Noah needed to open the back of the picture frame.  He was so happy to see the $10 bill in there.  He thought it was great because he was already pleased with his framed picture of his Uncle Vinnie.  :) 

Mia on the other hand felt a little jipped.  Noah made her feel better by handing the $10 over to her...

That makes 2 years in a row that the Almanza Family was voted "Best Gift".

We better start thinking ahead now for next year...