Pre-Christmas

The days leading up to Christmas were filled with more fun parties and get togethers with friends.  There was also a bit of stress and drama.  Justin had been planning on taking Christmas Eve off, but then decided he’d rather go into work with the assumption and hope that they would let everyone go home early.  Like I’ve said, he’s all for getting “free stuff” and getting a few hours off of work while saving a PTO day was worth it… to him :)  Anyhow, turns out we had some last minute issues arise with a couch we {finally!} ordered for our family room.  Going into downtown Bellevue on Christmas Eve wasn’t at all what I wanted to do on Christmas Eve, but if we didn’t take care of it we’d have to wait til after the New Year.  So Bellevue it was.  Justin and I met up at a convenient park-n-ride.  As I got out to let Justin into the drivers seat I noticed a wallet on the ground.  My first inclination was to just ignore it, I didn’t need anything else to deal with that day, but of course we couldn’t.  Inside the wallet was a Microsoft ID so we tried to call Microsoft to track him down, but hello, it’s Christmas Eve!  Long story short, we finally got in touch with him via facebook and since he lived close to where we were we ended up driving it out to his house.  Yes, totally a good deed, but it still felt like a major inconvenience.  I felt really guilty leaving the kids home alone for hours on Christmas Eve, but not guilty enough to turn down Justin’s offer to go out for lunch after we’d finished at the furniture store.  Don’t worry the kids don’t mind – they got to watch Christmas movies and play the DS while we were gone – pure heaven for them.

Once back home it was time to start our Christmas Eve traditions.  First off, making cookies for Santa.

Carly’s “don’t take a picture” of me face

Oh, there it is again

I had been planning on making potato soup in bread bowls for dinner (a Holly friendly take-off from the Hipwell tradition of clam chowder), but our late lunch didn’t leave Justin or I very hungry.  I think the kids ended up with a fancy Christmas Eve dinner consisting of various leftovers.

After dinner we introduced a few more ornaments from our “25 days of Christ” activity and read the story of Christ’s birth from the family bible my family read from each Christmas.  

We talked about acting out the nativity – the kids determined I would be the ideal Mary (being “great with child”) and Justin would be a fitting donkey :)  In the end though we just listened to Justin read the scripture passages. 

I mentioned last year that I wanted to start the tradition of having the kids open pajamas on Christmas Eve.  It almost didn’t happen, but the girls pajamas arrived via UPS that very day and Justin was able to pick some up for Katie that afternoon.  The kids loved their new jammies!

Jason was being really silly that night - likely a combination of Christmas excitement and too many sugar cookies

Before heading up to bed, the kids put out their letters to Santa and a plate of cookies.  I was particularly impressed with Jason’s drawing on the right.  He’s becoming quite the artist.

Abigail and Carly have requested that I not post the inside of their letters this year. 

The kids were in bed by 8pm and we didn’t hear a peep from any of them til morning at our agreed upon time of 7:30am.