Christmas Eve

This year was our first year completely by ourselves on Christmas Eve, and it was really fun. We did all our usual traditions, which mostly revolve around food, starting with our Soup in a Bun dinner. The kids and I made the cute penguin place cards, which we later ate, and I made two different soups to go in the bread bowls. We got off to a slightly late start, because I got behind on the jello. As you can guess, it takes a LONG time to get all 12 layers to set! The food was great. We then proceeded to Event #2 for the night, which is when Bryan reads the Christmas story from the Bible. We talked a bit about that, and a bit about the good deeds we'd been working on all month, and then we headed into the Living Room for Event #3. Event #3 is when we exchange gifts with each other. This is something I started a couple years ago, and I highly recommend it. Since the kids use their own money to buy each other gifts, they are usually quite small. But the fact that they are the first gifts opened...never have their been more excited or grateful kids!! It is the highlight of the whole thing for me - seeing how excited the kids are to give their little presents, and how excited and appreciative they all are for the little things they get. It's the best. They usually have some homemade gifts for Bryan and I that they made at school or Scouts, and even the occasional bag of "64 peases" of candy, carefully selected from their Halloween bags. That was from Tyler. And Ella had been working for weeks on cards and pictures for everybody, on top of her dollar store presents, which was very sweet...and so Ella. Event #4 is when we threw out the reindeer food, set out Santa's cookies and milk, and then all read Twas the Night Before Christmas in the new Christmas pajamas that Santa sends each year on Christmas Eve. What a great night!!