Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve is one of my favorite days of the year. You have all of the anticipation of Christmas ahead of you and we have so many fun traditions. Certainly one of the things that was such a big part of this Christmas was just missing my Mom. She loved Christmas so much and we loved going to my parents house and celebrating. We invited my Dad, Bruce, Amy, and Kevin to come spend Christmas Eve and Christmas at our house. We are glad that we can bring them into our home and traditions even as things change without my Mom here. I was also grateful because Shantel talked to my Dad to see if we could help him buy some presents for Bruce, Amy and Kevin. That is something that he could not do on his own and while he could just give them money, it is so much more fun at Christmas to have presents to open. 

We started the day with our traditional Christmas jammy pictures. 

We played games in the afternoon and then got to work making pizza. We had crazy trees, a star and then a bunch of ornaments that people could make their own custom pizza. 

The food was so delicious. 

After dinner we did a present organization and also voted on our favorite wrapped presents. 

Then we did a small Christmas program. We had a book with the Christmas story and then it had songs mixed in, so we would read a bit and then sing Christmas songs. 

Then we had Christmas roll and frappe. (We could not find any lime sherbet, so we decided to make some using our Ninja Creami, it was okay, but not quite the same). 

We did our kids secret names this year with things that my Mom loved from Christmas (I'll share the names in our Christmas post). 

The kids set out stockings and then were ready for bed. We had a great day and I love Shantel and each of our kids so much. 

Lydia and Lucy stockings:

Austin and Caleb stockings:

Then we also did stockings with Bruce, Amy, Kevin and my Dad. We all contributed a few things and it was really fun. (Shantel and I still did stockings for each other and just exchanged those on Christmas morning). 

We also did our special breakfast stockings for the kids to open first thing in the morning when they wake up. They love that so much. They all got a banana, cereal and a juice. Merry Christma!