Christmas Eve Eve

I need to recap Christmas, and I suppose I need to start somewhere.  So I'll start with the beginning of the festivities.  On Christmas Eve Eve we traveled to my parents' house to celebrate Christmas with them.  The tree was looking beautiful...


And the boys were most happy to play with their cousin, Eliza.


We had our big Christmas meal that night, and then the next morning, we woke up and opened gifts (after posing for some pictures first, of course).






My mom bought these reindeer ears for all the grandkids last year and we've yet to get a picture with all of them wearing them.  Maybe one day! 


Somehow I managed not to upload one picture of the gift opening.  For our family, it was relatively fast and furious (which just means that it didn't take four hours of one present being opened at a time...instead we all opened one at the same time and tried to take time to see what everyone got before moving on to the next).  Part of the reason I don't have these pictures is because we managed to forget to bring our camera.  These pictures are stolen from my brother's camera.

Later Aunt Beth had arranged for the kids to make some cookies for Santa.  They had a ball doing that.








And then I tried in vain to get a cute picture of the boys together in their matching pjs...


They are cute...and laughing...but not quite giving me the picture I had in mind (of two loving brothers, happily smiling into the camera!).








Oh well.  Better luck next year.

It wasn't long before the kids were getting a bit tuckered out, and they enjoyed a rare quiet and still moment reading a book with Aunt Beth.


These next two pictures are what tired and content looks like:




After all of the family fun, we decided to stay and go to church there to allow us a little more time to spend with everyone, and I think after being so overwhelmed by how excessively well attended the Christmas Eve service was at our church last year, it was nice to be in a smaller crowd (with so many familiar faces!). 

We got home too late for Christmas Eve traditions (we did read Twas the Night Before Christmas right after we put the boys in their pajamas for the ride home), the boys fell asleep in the car and were sound asleep when we transferred them to their beds when we got home. But the stockings were indeed hung by the chimney with care...


And on the next post you can find out if St. Nicholas indeed was soon there!  :)