Christmas Eve

Matt was off the entire week of Christmas which was wonderful. We enjoyed having a couple of days with no big plans to just play and spend time as a family. We didn't have plans on Christmas Eve, so we thought it would be fun to spend the morning at the aquarium in Jenks. It was the first visit for the kids, and Nathan and Samuel had a great time.

They were interested in all the exhibits, and we saw lots of fish, crabs, alligators, otters, and  turtles.

One of their favorite parts was crawling through a tunnel and then up a ladder in the middle of a big tank. They spent close to thirty minutes playing in it.

Their other favorite part was the shark tunnel. They ran back and forth through it at least seven or eight times. They seemed to enjoy the tunnel part more than the shark part. They had a blast though and burned off a lot of energy.

We headed home around lunch time, and had a relaxing afternoon. That evening my parents joined us at our church's Candlelight communion service. It was a special time to focus our hearts on the true meaning of Christmas. It was also one of the first services where Nathan stayed with us instead of going to the nursery. He was so well behaved, and it was super sweet to hear him singing the Christmas carols. He even went up and sat on stage with the other children during the Advent lighting.

And it was fun to get a little more wear out of one of Elisabeth's Christmas dresses :). She slept through most of the service. I'm so thankful she is with us this Christmas.

After the service, we went to Braums for ice cream and then came home and put the kids to bed.

After the boys were asleep, Matt and I got busy getting ready for Christmas morning. Samuel's gift took a lot more assembly than we were expecting.

While Matt assembled toys, I stuffed their stockings, set up the video camera and rocked Elisabeth to sleep.

Once everything was ready for the morning, we headed to bed. I think i might have been more excited than Nathan about Christmas morning!