Holidays with the Shahs Part IV: Christmas Eve at Ba and Dada's!

Sweet brothers enjoying with Ba and Dada!

This year we celebrated Christmas Eve at Ba and Dada's with everyone including Sanjay Mama, Dimple Mami, Kedar and Sohini too!  We had a wonderful Mexican Fiesta meal of enchiladas, Mexican pizza, tortilla soup, and Mom's specialty, sopapillas!  After eating we played a festive game called White Elephant in lieu of doing traditional Christmas gifts for everyone.

In White Elephant, everyone purchases one gender neutral gift within the agreed price range and contributes it to the "pot".  Then everyone is assigned a number (1 through the # of people participating) and the #1 person gets to choose the first gift and open it.  Then the #2 person goes and has the option of either choosing a new gift from the pile and opening it or "stealing" #1's opened gift.  Play continues in that manner, and each gift can be stolen only up to 2 times.  After that it is the 2nd "thief"'s permanent gift.  After the final person takes his/her turn, #1 then has the final option to steal any of the opened gifts that have not reached their max steal limit or keep his/her current gift.

The gifts were great, we had a ton of fun playing, and we figured it would be a fun alternative and family activity to do over a Secret Santa.  However, in the end, everyone requested Secret Santa for next year so there is an opportunity to make the gifts more personal and meaningful.  Both ideas sounded great to me!

Krish was pretty much the designated
"gift unwrapper" during White Elephant!
He definitely loved his job!

Dadi ended up with the electric power drill!