Christmas Eve

This year we got to host Christmas Eve. We invited both sets of parents and had a wonderful night.

Due to some conflicts, we were unable to have our traditional Christmas day fondue on Christmas day. We decided to compromise and have it on Christmas Eve and have our ham dinner on Christmas day. I also wanted to have a lot of what I call pre-eats. It's all the yummy stuff you can snack on before dinner and it just happens to be the food I like to eat best. I made a lot of stuff and then when my parents showed up they had a ton of stuff. All together we had enough food to feel a small country. Seriously there were so many different things to eat it wasn't even funny, but it was fun.

Paul getting started on some snacks.
Me with some of my hard work.
Dad sniffing my chocolate bourbon pecan pie.
Baby girl and I.
A picture with my parents.
At some point in the evening the kids got my camera. Most of their pictures are a little hard to make out but one of them got this and I was glad. It it a bunch of our Santa pictures throughout the years. It is so fun to look back at these. I don't even think we got them all out this year.
After dinner the Elves rang the doorbell and left us some packages.
New fuzzy Pj's!!!
Andrew stripped right down in the living room and changed.
After everyone was changed we acted out the Christmas story. My mom was the narrator and Emma was Mary.
Andrew was Joseph.

Here we all are in our costumes that my mom brought. Grandma Nancy was the Angel and the rest of the adults were shepherds or wise men. It brought a very sweet spirit into our home.

We talked about Jesus and Andrew got very emotional. It was a very sweet moment and then all the grandparents got to share their testimonies. I don't know if there was a dry eye in the house. This was the first time that we got to celebrate a holiday with both sets of grandparents all to ourselves. It was really special.

After that we took our traditional picture in our PJ's and then we opened some presents since we wouldn't be seeing my parent's the next day. My mom made me this blanket with some help from my day. I love it but hope they aren't trying to tell me something ;)
Paul loved his BYU windshirt. He kept it on the rest of the night.
Andrew got some stuff that he can use for scouts and Emma got a Lego set but their big gift was a box of Magic cards. They were so excited!
After we said good-bye we hung "the sheet" and Marius was not pleased. He wouldn't go under or around it. It laid next to it pouting.

Santa was hard at work while the kids were wide awake. Good thing we had the sheet!

Finally all the light were out and we tried to sleep. It didn't work out too well for us. Emma came in at 2:45 a.m. to see what time it was. After that Andrew came into our room and made a bunch of noise. I bet I didn't get more than 5 hours of sleep. Oh well. It was Christmas.