Christmas EVE

We enjoyed having the Allreds and Swaseys over on Christmas Eve. We had yummy Beef Brisket, Cheesy potatoes, Broccoli Casserole, Green Salad, Lion House Rolls, Yams, and Pumpkin Pie from Costco. It was great food and company...although we missed Drew deployed far away "Doin Time"! We put on a very cute and amateur performance of the Nativity story with lots of little smiles and giggles! This is one of my favorite traditions. Since we all have the same tradition of opening jammies, on Christmas Eve, we all opened them together. It was hilarious to watch them all rip them open. Josh was soooo excited to finally open a gift. Unfortunately his little 3 year old heart was expecting something other than jammies and he immediately through them across the room, ran and buried his little face into Jared's lap and burst into tears. It was sad and hilarious at the exact same time! Once he realized that he and Jake were matching and that Jake was super excited about having Rudolph, he decided it was okay and find his smile again. Later we let him open up one Bionicle from Carter since he's only 3 after all! Our guests stayed for a bit. The girls sang around the piano with Hanna accompanying and all the little boys ran around crazy while the parents visited about traditions and what preparations still had to happen that night! After everyone left, we put the cookies out, sprinkled the driveway with reindeer food and magic glitter, and all the kids went to bed in the little boys room together...minus Coleman! Hanna read everyone the Night Before Christmas...and then they fell asleep with strict instructions not to leave the room until 7 am! Daddy even put up a road block (the card table) so no one would accidently forget. (Since mom and dad still had to put together a surprise in the bonus room...an air hockey table--we didn't want any insomniac kids to ruin the surprise!)