This is waaay over due. It’s been sitting in my blog dashboard for a while now unfinished. So here it is, a few weeks late.
The Turlindelzi Christmas is more commonly called the Turner-Medlin Christmas or Medlin-Turner Christmas, depending on who you ask. But since we have added us and the Lattanzi’s to the last name mix, I came up with a new name – Turlindelzi. Our two families have been doing our annual Christmas get together for years…I mean years, we’re talking 20+ years. It’s one of two events all of us “kids” look forward to every year! The other one is our New Years Day extravaganza to celebrate my dad and Bob’s Birthdays. Now that the “kids” are starting to have their own kids, we hope they will look forward to it as much as all of us do!
Next generation Turner-Medlin crew
We always have a wonderful meal, usually Vicki’s chili and other yummy foods and a birthday cake for Jake. This get together has turned into a family birthday party for Jake as well.
After dinner we do Jake’s birthday celebration (cake and gifts) and then let the little kids open their gifts. Every year the little kids get a new pair of Christmas pajamas from grammy and granna Vicki.
The boys in their new jammies
After the little kids, we let the older people open their gifts – haha. I mean our parents. This is usually funny to watch and there is almost always a story that is “the funniest thing you have ever heard!” OR There will be a story behind every gift between my mom and Vicki! Fun times in deed.
The last couple of years us older kids have started doing a white elephant gift exchange instead of getting gifts for everyone. We kind of changed the name of the gift exchange though to the green brown bag white elephant gift exchange. Its green because it is something nice but that we already have and don’t want anymore. For example, picture frames or a candle holder, etc that’s still nice but you aren’t using anymore. Its brown bag because we wrap it in a brown bag instead of using wrapping paper and then the white elephant is self explanatory. This is usually a fun time and of course is more fun when people steal gifts!
Growing up we would always end up staying around and playing games, laughing at stories until we pee our pants and who knows what else but now that we have kids we typically end up calling it a night so we can get the little ones to sleep.
This year was a hard year for us all during the celebration because we were missing one key person, Bob. We were all sad that he wasn’t with us this year but he was in spirit and in our memories of him. The hardest part about it was watching my dad. Bob was his best friend and he looked lost without him there this year. I am glad the boys were there because he was holding one the majority of the night and I think they helped distract him. The two of them would always just sit back and watch us all be crazy and laugh at us while talking about golf. I know it was hard for him and I can’t imagine how hard New Years day is going to be on him.
Like I said earlier, this is one of 2 events I look forward to every year and I’m already ready for next year!
