Christmas Eve

Wow...Christmas came fast this year. It seemed just yesterday we were on day 25 of our countdown to Christmas and now it is tomorrow. The kids are so excited and have been bouncing off the walls. Makena has been telling me every day how many days are left until Christmas and now she can't believe that Santa comes tonight. We have been tracking Santa on our computer seeing where he is at. The kids have enjoyed that, but Makena is a little scared that Santa will actually be coming in our house. I told her not to be afraid, he is nice and he comes in and leaves very fast because he has lots of houses to visit. She was more calm after I told her that. We made our magic reindeer dust a couple of days ago so that we could spread it on the lawn for the reindeer to see and to attract them to our house. It was cute to watch them carefully spread it on our lawn. Tyler had no idea why he was throwing chocolate/glitter oats on our lawn, but he enjoyed it! We have been baking cake pops, rolls and chocolate chip cookies while Dad and Grandpas worked on the basement. It has been a fun, festive day!


Hailey ready for the festivities


Kali sprinkling reindeer dust


Makena and Kali throwing the reindeer dust. They wanted to make sure it was all over so the reindeer could see it.


Makena, Kali and Tyler


Tyler and Kali


Makena


Makena, Kali, Tyler and Hailey before we left for Grandma and Grandpa's house.


We spent Christmas Eve at my parents house. We enjoy going over for good company, good food and lots of fun. We always do a white elephant exchange...something we look forward to every year. This year there were dog ornaments, a huge trophy, treats, money and more that I don't remember. It was fun...but next year we need to be more mean and take presents away from other people!!!

Molly, Jon and Tyler


Tyler, Kali and Grandma


Grandpa, Ryan and Makena

The kids did the Nativity while Grandpa read the story of Jesus birth. We had to do it twice because the kids wanted to play different parts. It was cute!

Kali as an angel



The shepherds - Gretchen and Tyler




Makena as Mary. She kept telling me all day how she was going to be Mary!


Shepherd - Gretchen


Love that "Joseph" is sucking his thumb.


Ryan and Gretchen...notice Tyler pulling off his costume!


Ryan


Gretchen as Mary


Ryan as Joseph


Tyler was done with his costume and wanted it off.


Kali as a shepherd with her sheep...a dog! Best we could do!


Makena as an angel. I'm pretty sure back then, the angel had a headband just like that!

We played games. One of the games was to see who could get a cookie from their forehead to their mouth the fastest. It was quite the scene and I was laughing hard when people were doing this. It is quite hard to do. Our cookie champion was Jacob!





We also played the M&M sorting game!


After the games, Grandma read the kids the Santa Claus story. Then we came home and put out milk and cookies for Santa, carrots and oats for the reindeer and M&Ms for Ellis! It was a fun evening!