Tradition - with variation - December 21

[gasp] We changed the date of our sleep over. Tradition has it on the night of the 23rd. But Kurt's family is leaving for IF and will be gone. And thanks to Kristen's lobbying in the past for doing it - a) so the kids aren't so tired from sleepover/Christmas eve/Christmas all in a row and b) so they can sleep under their own tree for a tradition at their own house. So tradition become a variable. I loved every minute of it.
We are so busy during the cousin sleep-over that I don't get around to taking photo's - until the highlight of the evening, when they open their pajamas. We play games, the kids run and run. They slid on Opa's ice rink. We made individual pizza's- with toppings of their individual choice. We delivered neighbor gifts - the kids actually sounded great this year. " Jingle bells" and "We wish you a Merry Christmas" with gusto. Then we piled into the van to go to the church gym to play when "what to our wondering eyes did apear..." there were cars and other people in the church (Could be because it's a Wednesday night and not every ward canceled YM/YW like our ward did) So we came back home and played some more.
We played a game with the PJ opening. They all know it's PJ's so which one belongs to who?
We had tags with clues like-
Blue eyes - oldest boy in family - goes to grade school - has only sisters - last name is not Simpson - brown hair *Carter*
So if you had a tag with the clue "blue eyes" and you had brown eyes, you would trade the pkg with someone who had blue eyes. Some kids had their package right away- others had to get down to the last clue. How many blue eyed- blond preschoolers do we have?

Zoe Ellie Stella Bree Christy in their matching monkey pj's.
Hannah Hallie and McKayla
Carter and Tyler
Jake and Tucker - they don't match because it's hard to match young men with size 4 little boys.
I always take photo's of the kids sleeping. Even when they are pretending. We let the older ones play downstairs while the little ones settled down. Amazing we found floor space for all.
This is what it is really like taking pictures. Jake couldn't stop rough-housing with Tucker. Love it.

And Carter gave his pillow to Hallie, then went into his own bed for a good night's sleep.
Next morning the rough housing started all over again. Tucker is such a good sport. We had poffertje's and cereal and everyone played in their pj's till parents came to take them home.PS. We really missed Emma and Aspen. Fortunately Aunt Jessi had a party for them on the 20th. They made gingerbread houses and got to open their PJ's then. Also Lincoln and Rachel had to miss out on the overnight stay. You have to be potty trained to join this party. They got PJ's too, I just didn't get a picture.