Day 187

187/365, originally uploaded by Aaron LaRue.

Merry Christmas! 
Just a disclaimer, I had a fantastic Christmas (one of the best in years even), and it's all because of my family, so this post is gonna be a bit on the long side.


My family loves traditions. A lot of the time, it's more about having some sort of tradition and coming together then it is about the traditions themselves. Some traditions fade away for whatever reason (I still miss going to Mammoth for the Superbowl...) and new ones come up occasionally. The only thing we might love more than traditions is Christmas, so today is a fun day in the LaRue house. 


For today's post, I'm going to run through some of our favorite traditions and kind of describe our Christmas Day for you all. So without further ado...


1. The Christmas Eve Family Reunion - Every year since my dad was a little kid, his side of the family gets together and has a reunion at a church. This is the longest running tradition we have, and it's the one that's least likely to go anywhere. When I was little, I remember it being super fun. All the kids would run around, play basketball and generally wreak havoc. Now I just kind of catch up with people and play guitar with my dad's cousin Fred (who absolutely shreds), which is still a good time. We all catch up, eat our pot luck dinner, Santa comes and hands out presents, and then some carolers come and sing to us. It runs like clockwork, and it will keep on that way for a long time. 


2. Sleepover at Grandma's House - After the reunion, we all head over to Grandma's house. Usually it's my family (6 of us), my Aunt's family (4), my uncle's family (3), and then both of my grandparents. The 15 of us cram into this modest size house and hang out, sometimes staying up super late, until we all find a random couch/bed to sleep on. This year was funny because my 6 year old cousin (we call her Cookie) is in gymnastics and was challenging people to handstand competitions. We were in my grandma's living room doing handstands until 1 in the morning, and after all that she was still the undisputed champion. My dad apparently had never done a handstand before, and while he's usually hyper-athletic, he was semi-retarded when it came to this less-than-miraculous feat. I've never seen him so uncoordinated like that, we all couldn't stop laughing. 


3. Watching "A Christmas Story" - While we are all hanging out at Grandma's house, we also watch the 1983 classic A Christmas Story. On repeat. For 24 hours. It is by far my favorite Christmas movie ever, every scene is hilarious. It runs for 24 hours straight on TBS, so we leave it on. Some years we actually sit down and watch the whole thing, other times we just keep it on while doing handstands.


4. Waking up super early - This is one tradition that didn't hold up this year, and I think I'm hoping it'll slowly fade out. My dad used to bring the motorhome to Grandma's house and all of the kids would sleep in it while it was parked in the front yard. This made it much easier for Santa to come ever year, because the kids were out of the house. But it also meant that we were self-regulated. We would wake up at some ungodly hour in the morning and pound on the door until the whole house was awake. Once they let us in we'd start opening presents. I think the earliest we ever woke up was 4:45, our parents were less than thrilled. Now that me and my cousins are a little older, we didn't wake up until 8 or so this year, which was actually really nice. 


5. The Present Circle - See all those boxes from yesterday's photo of the tree? We all sit in the living room and we open them, one by one. All 15 of us. Someone gets a present handed to them and they open it as everyone watches. We go around like this, with everyone opening presents, for hours. We started opening around 9 this year and we didn't finish until 3 P.M., and that was considered a quick year. It's so much fun because you get to see what everyone gets and it gives you time to thank whoever got you your present before you open your next one. It's especially funny making the little kids wait in between presents, they get SUPER antsy. 


6. Uncle Greg as Santa - Opening presents like this takes a ring leader, and that's our Uncle Greg. He's a die-hard Vikings fan, so he wears his Vikings santa hat, digs through that massive pile of boxes, and doles out the presents. He keeps things moving and makes sure everyone gets a chance to open something on a regular basis. He's also made his own tradition of bringing his gifts from his employees to Christmas, and then opening them in front of us and reading the cards aloud. We've never met any of these people, and sometimes Greg throws in some ad-libs, so it's pretty funny. This year he started messing with the little kids too. Sometimes he'd call out their name and start to hand them a box, only to realize that he "read the wrong name", and then hand it to someone else. Another time, he found someone's shoes which were left by the tree. He picked them up, claimed that they were an unwrapped present from Santa, and handed them to my 8 year old cousin. They were at least 5 sizes too big, and my cousin was at a loss what to do with them. 

7. Pancake Breakfast - After our first round of opening presents, we always stop and have breakfast. My grandma makes thin, chocolate chip pancakes that are pretty much like soft cookies. Of course we have bacon/eggs/hash browns and other breakfast foods, but those change. Chocolate chip pancakes are there every year, and if they tried to change it there would be a revolt. 

8. The Funny Gift - Every year, without fail, someone gets a gift that's a little out there and it gets made fun of. As a family, we sit for a good amount of time, laugh our asses off, and poke fun at it. It sounds mean, but it's all out of fun. Usually it's some sort of clothing item. I'd say 75% of the time, it's something my mom bought. A few years ago she bought my Uncle Sean, who is a massive man, a jacket that was 2 sizes too small. We made him try it on and he started to model it for the family, we couldn't stop laughing. This year my Grandma bought my cousin Lash, who is on leave from basic training in the Army, a bright pink shirt. It was actually a decent color pink, but it said "Take it Slowly" on it and had a super hip cut with a wide and loose neck. We made him try it on and damn near lost it, we must have laughed for 10 minutes. It was especially funny when we made it pull his dog tags out on top of it, it just enhanced his look. I think my mom cried at one point from laughing so hard. We never know who's going to get it, or who is going to give it, but there is always THAT gift every year. 


9. The Towel - Another thing that we get every year, without fail, is a beach towel from my Grandma. Everyone in the family get's one and we all know it's coming. My mom and my aunt love it, because it's a super practical gift and they always get used, but the little kids hate it because it eats up one of their presents in the circle, and that means they're going to have to wait that much longer until they get one of their presents they know they want.


10. Clapping for the Towel - This year, my 8 year old cousin Ethan was handed that big box that inevitably held his towel. He didn't realize it was coming, but everyone else did. As he began to open it, we all clapped to build excitement, which only lead to greater disappointment when it was his towel. This immediately became our new ritual. Whenever Greg would hand someone that big box from Grandma and Papa that we knew had a towel in it, we all started clapping. Then, somehow, we started to chant "Hava Nagila" along with it. Once that happened, my dad would get up every time, dance like a Russian dancer kicking his legs out, and kick his ugg boots off of his feet sending them sailing through the air. When the person who was opening finally tore through the paper and opened the box, they would grab the towel and hold it up, yell "HEY!" and the clapping would stop immediately. This is by far my favorite new tradition, it made things super exciting.


11. Papa's Tag Changing - This year we had another funny thing that I hope turns into a tradition. My grandpa, who most likely woke up hours before anyone that day because he's old and that's what he does, put a bunch of new tags on the presents, changing the names. He put them on top of the presents, so that when my uncle would grab them he'd see the new tags first. Then the person would get the present and see the real tag on the side and would have to hand the present off. It was a funny way to mess with my uncle and no one could figure out who did this mischievous act. Papa never owned up to it, playing confused just like the rest of us, but I know he did it, and I hope he does it again next year.


12. Garrett is Annoying - This is less of a Christmas tradition and more of an everyday thing, but I'm going to embrace it this year as a tradition. My brother loves to be annoying just for the sake of being annoying. I think he sits in his room and annoys himself sometimes out of sheer commitment to his craft. This year he bought himself a toy helicopter (which is actually super sick) and was flying it around all day. You could feel it flying above your head, so all day people would duck when they felt wind, afraid that Garrett was about to kamikaze his new toy. To add to his arsenal, I got him a gun that shoots marshmallows up to 40 feet. Within 10 minutes of getting it, he had gotten a headshot on my cousin Lash and pissed everyone else off and was forced to put the gun away.


Christmas in my house is like a circus sometimes and I love every minute of it. This was one of the most fun Christmases I've had in a long time, I'm so thankful that I have an awesome family to keep my life exciting. We hit our stride this year, I'm already looking forward to next family gathering because it should be just as fun.

Finally, for my picture today, I wanted to wear a Santa hat. Usually I end up with bows on my hat/shirts/forehead, so this year I stuck them on my eyes for the picture. It was a super simple set-up, it took all of 3 minutes to take the picture. We went into a narrow hallway in my grandma's house with white walls and I set up the camera. I cranked the flash up and just eyeballed the exposure, I knew I wanted to blow it out so I didn't really care about the exact level. I had Lash take the picture and Garrett hold the flash to the right of the camera and that was that!


Merry Christmas everyone!