Christmas Pickle

One of our family traditions is the Christmas Pickle.
We have two glass pickle ornaments, one for the boys and one for the girls. On the afternoon of Christmas Day I hide the pickles one at a time in the tree. This year the boys went first.



The rule is no touching the tree, you can just look and then point to it if you find it.

Steve gets so into finding the pickle. He and Sarah are two of the most competitive people I know. Hum, I wonder where they or Sarah atleast gets it from.

Sometimes there is a little wrestling involved, but the winner remains victorious. Jon I think just wanted to win really bad, so he figured if he could wrestle it away from Daniel he might be declared the winner. Wrong.


This year it was Daniel. Most everyone was fine with that since he actually missed out on the pickle for the 2 years he was on his mission. He won Whoppers and gumballs. He was happy.

Sarah and Kelsey were next. I'm surprised neither of them actually got under the tree. They were pretty darn close to that this year. The older they get the funnier they are.

Obviously Sarah didn't win the pickle this year. Darn it and she picked out the prize because she was so sure she was going to win!!! Notice some of the ribbon has come off the tree, so much for no tree touching :)

Kelsey won!!! Her prize was a hot chocolate cone. Actually it was just hot chocolate with marshmallows wrapped in a clever way as to look like a cone. I think Steve was looking to make sure that Sarah was truly ok. She was.

And our two winners for the 2008 Christmas Pickle are Kelsey and Daniel. Sarah and Steve say they are winners too so sneak into the picture.

We have been doing our Christmas Pickle for as long as I can remember. It's something they all look forward to and I have to admit I love doing it too. They all just make me laugh. It's a crack up listening to them go over strategies, usually it's the Simpers that are doing the planning. I'm not too sure what will happen when little ones start showing up in the picture. We may have to get more pickles because I don't see the bigger ones abandoning this tradition for quite some time.

Christmas was alot of fun this year. We were fortunate that we had everyone home. I love it when that happens. I know that sometime down the road it won't be like that but I am so thankful for the times it does. There is nothing like having all your family around especially during the holidays.

2009

Thanks to our girls we have now entered the world of blogging. Thanks Sarah and Kelsey.
(Sarah helped me set this whole thing up today.)

I can't imagine that our life is that interesting but they assured me that it is. Well afterall though I love to read other people's blogs, it's actually fasinating to me. So this will be one more reason to not get those scrapbook pages done!!!

Christmas was great, it always seems to get here so fast and is over even faster :( We hunted all over for a Wii Fit for Christopher and finally found one AFTER Christmas. I had left him an IOU from Santa in a tiny little stocking, that seemed to suffice. I would really like to use that thing myself but I don't want to when people are around or have people see my stats or anything. Jonathan assured me today that I could password protect it, now I just have to think of a different password that I can remember. Frank got me a trip back east. We had such a great time last summer that we want to go again!!!! I'm so excited to go. The kids got me a glass wall hanging that says, Home, a refuge from the storm. I love it. Daniel got me a wall hanging that talks about Fullfillment. I love things like that. Especially since Frank and I, ok Frank, repainted our family room and our hallways.

I'm not much for New Years Resolutions because by January 7th I've broken almost everyone. So this year I thought I would try something new. My goal for this year is to just be a better me. I feel like that is a broad enough goal that I can accomplish. I let you know how the progress goes. Atleast it will be something to blog about.