Merry Christmas Eve

Kevin started our Christmas Eve off with an early Christmas gift...

Yum! The best part was that the majority of the cookie cake was covered in frosting. He saw this cake a few weeks ago and thought, "Kristina would love that," after watching me and my family devour the birthday cookie cake and leave all the unfrosted pieces untouched.

Our little Santa baby was decked out for our Christmas Eve party, but spent the majority of the time snoozing away in Kevin or Grandma's arms.

The cookie cake was our pre-party appetizer. As you can see, Andrew loves the frosting too.

We told Andrew he needed to wear something festive for the party... so he chose his Christmas pj top as his shirt for the evening. He thought he was very stylish and was not very happy when he spilled on his special shirt.

At around 5:30pm our party guests arrived! We invited two families over to join our family's Christmas Eve festivities. Each family brought an appetizer and a dessert and we started off the party eating lots and lots of yummy food! All of the desserts involved chocolate, so I was definitely happy about that.

After playtime, chatting, and food, we sang some Christmas carols. Shari accompanied us on the piano and the kids had fun singing and dancing. Their favorites include Rudolph, Frosty, Once there was a Snowman, Jingle Bells, and Jingle Bell Rock.

After singing, we did a re-enactment of the Nativity. We used a shortened and modified version of the scripture story and the kids got all decked out in costumes. They were so adorable that we started off with a little photo session and then we read the story... and attempted to have the kids act it out.

Joseph and the half-man, half-sheep :)

Cute little lamb

Mary- she took her part very seriously

Mary and Joseph

(we were just happy that Andrew wore his costume for a few minutes)

The adorable wise man

(his treasure was so enticing that Joseph/Andrew immediately said that he wanted to be a wise man instead of being Jesus' father... hmm... his priorities might be a little off?)

I didn't get a solo picture of our sweet Angel, but she is on the bottom left and was darling.

Before Joseph/Andrew ran off to be a wise man, we were very proud that he walked to Bethlehem with Mary and then knocked on the door of the inn to try and find a place for Jesus to be born. After that, he abandoned Mary... so he didn't make it into the picture above. He was off under the Christmas tree counting his money and rummaging through presents... which he then tossed on baby Jesus (the doll- Caitlin's understudy).

Mary asked where the "real" baby Jesus was... since baby Caitlin was supposed to be playing Jesus... so we brought her down from her nap and all the kids surrounded the manger to stare at baby Caitlin/Jesus (except Andrew who was more concerned about his treasure :)).

Here was a shot at the end of the Nativity with all the children surrounding the new baby... who remained fast asleep!

We finished off the party with more playtime and peppermint ice cream pie with Shari's special hot fudge. Delish!

We knew it was time for the party to end when Andrew started melting down... so we said goodbye and Merry Christmas to our friends and attempted to get little man into bed ASAP!

We cleaned up and chatted with the missionaries who were also at our house for several hours on Friday night trying to Skype on our computers with their parents. They serenaded their families (and us) with a beautiful version of "Away in a Manger" and listening to their conversations brought back lots of memories of Christmases spent on the phone with Scott when he was on his mission. So glad he is home now!

Santa's elves spent the rest of the evening wrapping gifts and getting things ready and assembled for Christmas morning.

Andrew's stocking tree

We finally got ourselves tucked into bed around 1 or 2am after several visits with Andrew who was too excited to sleep and kept talking about Santa flying through the sky in a sleigh with reindeer and coming down the chimney and leaving presents in his room.

We were so lucky to have Shari with us to celebrate Christmas Eve. Not only did she cuddle with Caitlin lots and lots and entertain Andrew... she also swept and vacuumed our house before the party and helped with lots of dishes and clean up after the party. What a great Christmas present!

We are also grateful for such wonderful friends who spent the evening with us!