As tradition, we always spend most of Christmas Eve celebrating Jesus' birthday in our home, including making a birthday cake, blowing out the candles, going to a special Christmas Eve service at church, and watching a special movie about Jesus' birth. We also make our final preparation for Christmas day and make and decorate cookies for Santa and just have fun together. This year, we went to an earlier Christmas Eve service so our night would not feel so crazy and hectic getting the kids home and into bed at a decent time. We also made a simple dinner of chicken and noodles in the crock pot and made some yummy treats for Christmas day including some sausage balls. It was a full day of activities.
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| Our sweet little birthday cake for Jesus. We chose to put 3 candles on our cake after our Christmas Eve service sermon on the Father, Son and Holy Spirit of Christmas. |
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| Brody helped Mommy cut out the gingerbread men for our cookies. |
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| He had also enjoyed helping lick the spatula from the cake batter. Silly boy! |
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| Decorating our cookies. |
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| An E for Evan |
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| A B for Brody |
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| An M for Mattie and Mattox |
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| Both boys enjoyed opening a present on Christmas Eve from their Papa. Brody got some cool new cars including two that light up and move and play some awesome (um, annoying) music. |
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| Evan's Papa knows he loves to play checkers. |
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| Singing Happy Birthday and blowing out the candles. I just love the snaggle tooth pictures of Evan. |
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| And eating some cake before bedtime. Yikes! Yep, they still slept well. |
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| Cookies and milk for Santa. |
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| The stockings are "magically" stuffed. |
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| And a sweet letter from Santa waits for the boys. Yes, Brewster hangs around for one more chance to tell the boys goodbye on Christmas morning. He knows Evan is particularly sensitive to his leaving after his first Christmas with our family so he makes sure Evan has a chance to hug him and say goodbye. He gives special permission for touching and hugs on Christmas morning. |
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| Presents are left under the tree. |
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| Evan's presents with his aircraft carrier and submarine. |
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| Brody got his "refrigerator"! |
You are so precious! I love reading about all the things you and your family do to make life special and meaningful. I smiled the entire time I read and looked through this post. I am one blessed lady to be able to call you friend! <3
ReplyDeleteThis looks like a fun and peaceful Christmas Eve. I love the picture of you and Brody baking together. So fun!
ReplyDeleteYou had such a special Christmas Eve. Your little family has the best traditions. I think I am going to work harder to make more for our family next year and in the years to come.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a wonderful Christmas Eve at home. Except for the year that Elliott was born we always spend Christmas Eve and Christmas in Tucson at my parents house and Michael's parents house. It's just what we do. But part of me feels like it would be nice to stay home. Spencer really wants to have Christmas morning at our own house. But then we would miss out on all the "stuff" with our families.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I love the tradition of the cake and your cookies looked delicious.
I can see the necessity of spending Christmas elsewhere if your family lives further away although in later years it might help if your parents could come to your house for Christmas instead. Just a thought. We have been so determined to keep our tradition of Christmas at home. We only missed Evan's first Christmas because my Granny died that year, and we gathered one last time with my Mom's family that year. Since then, we just do Christmas here and drive about an hour to visit family. It isn't a bad drive, and the traffic is very light on Christmas day. :-)
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