Christmas Eve

Our Christmas was completely wonderful this year. Both of our families have always celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve which makes for a hectic evening but always very special. We start off at my parent's house where we have a very nice sit down dinner amongst lots of laughing and chit chatting and many kids running around. My mom cooked 2 beef tenderloins this year which was such a treat! As you have seen from previous blog posts there are 5 kids in my family plus 4 of us have a spouse or fiance plus 6 grandkids. It makes for a very fun, loud, and crazy time and TOO many presents. We eat, sing Christmas carols, and then open our gifts. We made plans to start some new traditions next year including reading The Purpose of Christmas by Rick Warren before our celebration and then sharing parts of it that touched us before opening our gifts. We also thought it would be fun to start reading some Children's books to the kids before opening our gifts. My sister Kathy recommends reading Olive, The Other Reindeer. She read it to her class this year and she said it was so cute, and that she probably enjoyed it more than them! So we will start looking for some cute stories to share!

The best shot we could get of all 6 grandkids (5 boys and only 1 girl!) Nana and Grandpa got a new TV from everyone! As kids we always went to Christmas mass, drove around and looked at Christmas lights (my dad would point out the red light on top of the water tower in our neighborhood and would say it was Rudolph). He would tell us that Santa must have been to our house already! We would be so excited. Then we would go home to a house full of presents under the tree. I still don't really know who put out all the gifts for us each year! It was completely enchanting. Around 8:30 we leave and go over to Randall's aunt's house which is only 3 minutes away! He celebrates with all his aunts, uncles, and cousins which makes for a rather large party as well! We have tons of appetizers and desserts to eat for the rest of the night. They have a unique tradition where they hire a Santa to show up at the door and deliver one present to everyone! However, we didn't do it this year, but will do it regularly again starting next year when Lexie really will understand more of what is going on. Lexie and Tripp are the only little kids on that side of the family. Everyone played games and just visited all night long. It was a great time! We didn't get home until 11:30 or so. Lexie and her Grandma coloring in her new extra large coloring book

Christmas Eve was very special this year and we are already looking forward to next year when we can make it extra special for our kids. I love trying to come up with new traditions especially ones that really will teach my kids the true meaning of Christmas... I would love to hear some of your family favorites...

I will have to post about Christmas morning and Christmas day later so stay tuned!