Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was on a Sunday this year which I thought was perfect. It was nice to get all ready in our nice Sunday clothes and go enjoy a meeting filled with Christmas music and messages. Then we came home and enjoyed being all together as we prepared for our special Christmas Eve dinner and evening.

 My parents drove down that day and joined us until the 27th. I also invited my friend Jami over with her two kids. Her husband started a new job out of state and she has a toddler and brand new baby and was alone for Christmas. :( We enjoyed having her with us Christmas Eve. Her daughter and Grace are only a week apart.

We were hoping for a white Christmas and late afternoon, it started to snow!

 We had a delicious Christmas Eve dinner - ham, roasted potatoes, rolls, Brussels sprouts, carrots, broccoli cauliflower salad, spinach strawberry salad, and Christmas jello. It was delicious!

 More snow coming down!

 Connor had fun holding baby Kamden. Good practice!

 After dinner we cleaned up and prepared for our annual nativity reenactment. It was fun to have a few more participants this year and a live baby Jesus! :) Last year we added Samuel the Lamanite to our lineup and it was a hit again this year. Connor was Samuel and we all had fun throwing stones at him (and missing, of course).

 Grandma was our angel appearing to Mary.

 Jeremy was the donkey and Eli was a disgruntled Joseph (haha, neither of the boys ever want to be Joseph).

 Our baby Jesus wasn't so sure at first, but he settled down and was so good!

 Connor was sore afraid of that angel!

 The three wisemen:

 After the nativity, we had lots of tasty treats for dessert. I went overboard as I do every year, making goodies all month for friends and neighbors and freezing extra to pull out on Christmas Eve. We had fudge nut cookies, fudge mint cookies, snowball cookies, fudge, Monster M&M cookies, ginger cookies, cinnamon sugar almonds & pecans, and Jami brought some cream cheese brownie bites. Pretty fun!

After dessert, we got the kids to bed and began Christmas morning preparations. Jeremy got to work on Connor's new basketball hoop!

 I love seeing everything set up and ready right before we go to bed, anticipating the excitement of the next morning. It was a great Christmas Eve!