Christmas Eve

The thing I love about being married and having a little family is beginning your own holiday traditions. It seems there always has to be a little give and take because you seem to be partial to doing what you did as a kid. So I am sure Kev and I will continue to add and refine what our traditions will end up being. But we definately want to build tradtions that are essentially are own family's.

Christmas Eve was filled with preparing for Santa to come, preparing our lovely dinner and having some time with family. We were lucky to have Kevins parents and brother come visit us for Christmas. And an extra treat to have my sister come for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. Sadly Gracie girl came down with a virus on Christmas Eve and was pretty much without energy the whole weekend.


Our centerpiece for Christmas. For Christmas Eve we had cornish game hens, and dinner turned out great.


Making cookies for Santa. This was the second round of making sugar cookies this season. The twins knew just what to do. They wanted to help me roll out the dough.


Grandpa licking the divinity bowl, and trying to sneak Zac some too. He is always wanting to sugar my kids up. And I must add here that Kevin made the most delicious divinity. It is not an easy task and I was highly impressed. He says it may be hard to repeat that so its a good thing I ate alot of it.


So I smile when I see this picture because I just envision Auntie talking to Gracie and explaining to her how to frost and decorate cookies all the while miss Gracie has decided she would just like to eat the frosting.


Gracie was super sick on Christmas Eve, this was the most energy I saw her have, when Auntie arrived and helped her decorate cookies for Santa.


mmmmm.....yummy!


"Help me Auntie, help!"


Making cookies with Auntie is so much fun.


This is out of order because Zac was so tired he got his Christmas jammies early and went to bed before our Christmas Eve program. So stinkin' cute if you ask me.


Grandpa read the Christmas story from Luke 2 while Kev acted it out with the kids using our "kid friendly" nativity set. They did a great job and stayed real engaged. Gracie loves the "baby Jesus" and had to use our more real looking one. I tried hard thoughout the month to explain to the twins why we celebrate Christmas and the real meaning. Whenever I would ask them they would say, "baby Jesus' birthday".


Daddy read aloud, "The Night Before Christmas".


After we read, we had a surprise knock at the door with a big red bag, it was sent from Santa with a note from his elves. We were to open the gifts inside to help us go to sleep so Santa could come.


Ty was so excited to open a present and even more thrilled when he saw it was pjs with a loader on them.


Gracie so sick, she was so ready for bed and loved her jammies and slippers.


The best picture of Ty in pajamas. He was a little apprehensive about the Cars slippers.



Christmas Eve was so fun. We made sure we put cookies out for Santa, carrots for the reindeer, and just in time to hear Santas bells and off to bed. Ty seemed so excited and started to really get into it. Love the magic of it all.