Christmas Eve

I am finally getting around to the holiday posts!  We stayed in Idaho for Christmas, it is getting too hard to travel with all the kids for the holidays.  We missed our other side of the family, but had a great time here too! Christmas Eve has always been my favorite since I was a child and we pretty much always do the same thing. We start off with our traditional dinner of fondue...steak, cheese, lots of hor dourves, and the best slush ever.

Starting at the top right and then going clockwise we have: Alexis (David and Melissa's oldest), Grandma, and Joshua...Sadie and Abigail, then Jennifer and Brett, and finally Melissa, David and youngest daughter, London.

Here is Ryan feeding some of that yummy slush to Sophie.  Do you appreciate her Santa outfit? 

After the dinner chaos (and it can be pretty chaotic) we move on to the Nativity.  As usual our costumes are top notch and very professional.  (Ha-ha) The kids act out the story in Luke and we sing a few Christmas Carols.  I think we need to figure out how to make it a little more reverent, and not so much comedy.  Any ideas?

Isabelle makes a natural Angel!

 Michael is taking his job as Joseph very serious.  Alexis is a sweet Mary, and then Luke, Emmaline, and Lauren are Shephards.  (Is that Michael/Joseph giving a military salute? He is like, "Don't worry Mary, me and my peeps have this whole thing under control.")

 

Annie, Eliza, and London starring as two sheep and a cow. 

Sadie, Joshua, and Abigail are wisemen...very appropriate since now that they are teenagers they really are SO wise. :)

After the whole Nativity we move on to singing the 12 Days of Christmas and I really wish I had this on video because you are really not getting the whole effect. We sing this every year and our vocal skills are pretty amazing! (Joking) We do have some great instumental talent that played that night and they really do have some skills.

The kids are so excited when after a long night they can finally pick a present under the tree from a cousin or Grandma and Grandpa and open it.  Even though the lighting in my pictures the whole night are terrible, I LOVE this picture of Annie.  She is so excited!  (She was even more excited when she opened it up and had a doll inside!)

Sophie was just content practicing her walking skills all night.  That practice paid off, because even though she had been almost walking for over a month, on Christmas she TOOK OFF!  She is standing on her new super soft and cute quilt from Grandma.

We all had a great Christmas Eve and it was nice of my Mom to host so we could come home and get ready for Santa to arrive.  The stockings were waiting and the kids went to bed with visions of sugar plums in their heads.  (James was up at least 5x until 3am trying to catch Santa!)

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a Good Night!