Christmas Eve

I love Christmas Eve!  I love that the entire day is filled with lots of family things to do and there is such a sense of excitement and anticipation in the air.

We spent the morning just hanging out.  We did a little bit of cleaning and a little cooking but the most significant thing we did in the morning was build the annual gingerbread house.  Colton was not into this at all so Dan and Brynn ended up making the gingerbread house while Colton and I played.

Hard at work

Ta-Da!

Aunt Patty and Uncle Ross joined us after nap time.  We had a great time hanging out with them.  It's a long standing tradition in our house that Santa always drops off new jammies for everyone staying in our house on Christmas Eve.  After an attempt at the entire family having a Wii bowling tournament in the basement, we came upstairs to find this... 

It appears that our elf delivered the jammies this year.  We all got changed into our super fabulous Christmas Jammies.  This was Ross' (future brother in law) first time spending Christmas Eve with us. Though, he had been warned about the Christmas jammies, I'm not sure he was fully prepared:-)  Welcome to the family Ross!

After that we had some dinner (Mexican night) and some birthday cake.  Happy Birthday to Ross (really it's on the 2nd).

Next on our agenda was to go outside and spread reindeer food.  We had made some at home and the kids also each made some at school this year so I know the reindeer were well fed when they stopped at our house.

We then came back inside and baked cookies for Santa.  We had already made lots of cookies but we always have to make fresh cookies for Santa.  I'm not even going to lie...I totally cheated.  We bought the kind that you just break apart and put on the cookie sheet.  Don't judge me...the kids were happy and Santa liked them too:-)

After that we it was bedtime so we all sat down to read the Night Before Christmas.  I always think this is going to be one of those sweet serene moments that you always see in movies.  Yea...not so much.  Brynn did sit nicely for the story but Colton could not have cared less and just ran around, screamed and tried to take the book.  Oh well...maybe next year.

After that we were all exhausted so it was off to see visions of sugarplums...or something like that:-)