Cape Girardeau Christmas Traditions

I got back from Cape Girardeau yesterday and had a ton of fun as usual. We had Christmas with 38 people this year on Friday night. It seems to get bigger and bigger every year. I'll never get tired of Christmas on my mom's side because of all the traditions. And boy do we have traditions... This year we didn't get there early enough to take part in the baking of the yummies, but they were incredible as usual. We had a smorgasbord of sweets...fudge, sugar cookies, pecan cookies, peanut brittle, apricot roll-ups...my mouth is watering just thinking about it all. Of course we had a Christmas dinner but this year my grandpa changed things up a little. We actually dined on pizza and salad this year rather than the traditional meat, mashed potatoes, veggies, etc. It was still delicious and there were plenty of sides to fill everyone up. That's some good cookin'! After we finished eating, the cousins rushed to the basement to begin rehearsing for the annual Christmas Cousin Band. Our band consists of 4 flautists, 2 trumpets (1 was missing though), 1 alto saxophonist, 1 trombonist, 1 pianist, and 1 drummer ranging from 8th grade to freshmen in college. This was probably our 4th or 5th year performing for the rest of our family and we get better and better every year. This year we played Joy to the World, We 3 Kings, and Carol of the Bells. We learned the first 2 within a matter of 10 minutes which is pretty swift if I do say so myself. For Carol of the Bells, my brother Sean and I had arranged our own version for our jazz combo, so we tweaked it to fit our cousin band. This was the first time we didn't use music and it turned out pretty well. While we were downstairs practicing, I decided to be a little goofy during my solo and play all gutsy like. All my cousins were laughing and really enjoyed it, so they dared me to do it in front of my aunts, uncles, and grandparents. I couldn't turn down the challenge so I soloed with everything I had. I don't even remember anything I played but I was running my fingers like crazy over that saxophone...it was insanely fun! Then my grandpa read the Christmas Story from the Bible and presented a Bible to one of my cousins who is going to be a teenager this next year. I really like this idea. They present the Bible as a symbol of passing the torch of faith on to the next generation. Next we sang Christmas Carols like we do every year. It is amazing how musical my family is. I stopped singing and just listened...WOW!!! We could seriously make a CD. Idono how so many people can make so many different harmonies sound so good. It's unbelievable! Ever since we were little, the girl cousins around my age have always done actions to the 12 Days of Christmas. We're getting older now, but it's still just as much fun. For each "day of Christmas" we have a different motion that just makes everyone crack up...especially 6 geese a laying. You could only imagine! We made each other promise that we would keep doing the actions no matter how old we got. Whenever we get married, our husbands will probably think we are pretty weird, but I couldn't not do that song with my cousins. Such good memories... Time for presents!!! We sorted out the thousands of presents under the tree, then the younger kids got to open first, followed by the older kids. There's too many people for everyone to give everyone presents so we just draw names around Thanksgiving to see who we should get presents for. After all those presents are opened, the adults (around age 16 and up) play a gift exchange game...Chinese Auction. Everyone brings a gift to put in the middle...some are humorous such as a Hillbilly Briefcase made out of underwear, and some are really nice. In this game, you can either open a new present from the pile or you can choose to steal from someone else who has a present already. We had 24 people playing and I happened to draw number 24 so by the time it got to my turn I could pick pretty much any present I wanted, as long as it hadn't been stolen 3 times already. I ended up with 3 awesome Christian CD's. The rest of the night consisted of eating, mingling with people we hadn't seen in awhile, the usual family stuff... 3 families, including mine, came from out of town so we stayed at my grandparents...as well as my aunt Sarah. A total of 18 people in one house! There are 2 girls in each family and I have soooo much fun with these girls. We played games and just had a blast as if we see each other every day. Time doesn't change how close we are. Saturday before we left, us 6 girls and Sarah went to Panera Bread for some mochas. We snapped some funny pictures and had a wonderful time together. We are such good friends and make such good memories every year that I just can't wait until next Christmas!