Christmas Eve

I guess I was feeling particularly connected to my Holi Daze sweatshirt today. Christmas can be a crazy time of the year.

We made plans to go to the movies together as a family this morning thanks to the discounts from the T-Mobile Tuesday app.  We saw “Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” – the Mr. Rogers movie starring Tom Hanks.  It wasn’t necessarily super entertaining for young kids, but I thought the storyline was fantastic and the movie was really well done.  

We’re trying to get Carly more experience behind the wheel so just as we were getting ready to leave the theatre we decided to let her drive which required a little seat swapping.  Shouldn’t be a big deal, but the sliding van doors have been really finicky lately (like not closing) so Justin and Carly swapped places within the confines of the van interior.

We invited Justin’s parents to join us for the movie, but they decided to pass so we picked up some pizza to take over to their house for lunch.  We also wanted to drop off their Christmas gift. A new family photo!  I had it professionally framed and love how it turned out.  I didn’t want to risk picking a frame that Linda didn’t like so we got her input on style and it seemed like she really liked it. I had sized it perfectly to fit in their dining room nook to replace the picture we last had taken 10 years ago, but it also looks great in the family room above the fireplace so not sure where it will end up when it finally gets hung.

We didn’t get home until 5 or 6pm so we didn’t have much time for our Christmas Eve family traditions.  Top of the kids priority was making sugar cookies!  Thankfully I already had the dough ready so it was just a matter of baking and frosting (and eating) them.

Next up was acting out the nativity – Justin narrated.  Abigail took on multiple roles as the donkey, angel and sheep.  Carly was Mary.  Jason was the shepherd.  Katie was the Wise Man.  And Drew was baby Jesus.

Carly making her entrance atop the donkey (Abigail) being VERY great with child (Drew)

The angel telling the wise man that baby Jesus had been born

No new pj’s for the kids this year since the kids don’t really wear pajamas much anymore.  I knew they would still want to open up a gift on Christmas Eve so I let them open up the personalized mugs I got each of them.  Fun and practical.  I love that they each now have their own mug like our everyday cups so that when they use them I’ll always know exactly who’s cup is who’s.  Of course we had to put them to use and drink a little hot cocoa before heading to bed.