Merry Christmas in July

The good thing about CIJ is having fun blogging about it, the bad thing is...while having so much fun and planning for Christmas in July, I run out of time to blog about it. I have so many ideas running through my mind, but haven't sat down to blog about them. Tonight however, we celebrated with our annual Christmas in July dinner. Today is the 25th of July and in our house, that means family, friends, food and fun!  The tradition seems to be growing each year and we gather a few more guest. I love having friend over, but the bad thing is my house just doesn't accommodate everyone well. But we squeeze in and make the best of it. It really, doesn't leave us much room to spread apart, so when one of us laughs, we ALL laugh!

So my next topic...the new camera in our home. My daughters first big purchase after working this summer, was a fancy new SLR camera. She was offered a deal she couldn't refuse, by a fellow student from school. After using my camera for years and going through several of her own portable camera's, this new camera is her prized possession. Over the past year, she's been slowly taking over the photographer role in the house, so when we have family get together or go on trips, she's the one responsible for taking the pictures. That works great, until she's with her friends and forgets she's the "Photographer". Tonight my BFF surprised me with an awesome birthday cake he made and my daughter missed the whole thing, until I got her attention and by then she had missed them all singing happy birthday to me. You moms know how it is, you are always on the backside of the camera and getting you in the picture can be difficult. She finally joined in and here are a few photos of my cake. I'll have to come back and do another post on this cake alone. 

Just like Christmas, we exchange names and buy one gift for the person on our list. We all know each other pretty well obviously, so it can be a lot of fun and HYSTERICALLY funny. 

 The "Last" book Aunt Sandy will ever read....

But NOT because she's "Old"

We all decided that Lesley finally needed a planner. 

I mean, she only works 4 jobs! 

My nerdy husband got the Gumby and Pokey toy he wanted, along with some Gumby Gummies.

Ciara got some Monogrammed towels from Aunt Sandy for college and had another break down moments. Something about towels and totes, seem to set off those moments in our house right now. 

And when Mike gets a Nerf gun, watch out. All must take shelter!

We did it potluck style this year and that worked really well. It kept the cooking at a minimum for everyone and better yet, the house stayed cool. We also "enjoyed" of a new kind of meat tonight - Hamurkey
Let's just say, it was suppose to be a honey spiral cut Turkey, but tasted like Ham. Literally, it was the weirdest thing ever. Needless to say, I won't be buying that again at Costco.

When you tell people you are having a Christmas in July, the response is pretty black and white. You hear....wow..that's kinda weird, but sounds fun or you hear...ARE YOU CRAZY. It's 6 months early and I hate doing it in December, why would you do it twice? Well my answer to this is family. You know, I married into a pretty big family, however my immediate family is an adopted family of friends. Often, they have other places they have to be and this is just one more excuse to gather then together for a night of fun. We could do it in August, but since I love Christmas, CIJ just sounds like a good excuse as any. It gives us one extra day a year to pull out the wrapping paper, wear a pair of Christmas earring and start day dreaming about how we wean to accomplish so much for the upcoming holiday season.

On that note, I"ll end with one final photo...