Christmas Eve

We had a fun, memorable Christmas Eve. Samuel asked to make a chocolate pie for dessert on Christmas, so he and I spent the morning baking. 

I consider myself a pretty decent baker, but one thing I've never come close to mastering is pie crusts. Good thing it still tasted delicious even though it looked a little wonky. 

We all spent the morning in our pajamas playing and ate spaghetti for lunch. After lunch we did our sibling gift exchange. A few years ago we started the tradition of taking the kids shopping at Dollar Tree to buy gifts for their siblings and exchanging them on Christmas Eve. They always look forward to shopping and exchanging gifts. 

Everyone was happy with their gifts! I was impressed with the thoughtfulness in their purchases.  

Katherine always wants to snuggle with Nathan's beloved stuffed penguin, so he got her her very own penguin :).

Katherine got daddy a PJ Masks puzzle and then insisted on putting it together for him. 

Matt and I also buy the kids a new game that they open on Christmas Eve and then we all play together. This year we got them Disney Apples to Apples. We also bought Pandemic because we found a great Black Friday deal, but after we played it we realized they're still to young for it.

I mean is there a more fitting Christmas gift for 2020 :).

 Apples to Apples was a hit though! We all had fun playing it together. 

We finally all got dressed in the afternoon and headed to our church's Christmas Eve service. It's another special tradition in our family. 

Elisabeth abandoned us to become a Miller for the service, ha!

The family Christmas Eve service has always been stressful for me keeping our Little Ones still and quiet. I was really reflective this year of how we are moving out of that stressful stage of Little Ones. I remember a Christmas service when Elisabeth crawled back and forth on the floor under the chairs and several years trying to quiet toddler babbles. The three bigger kids behaved wonderfully during the service, and this Cutie wasn't even that loud or wiggly. We're moving out of the baby/toddler stage and into a big kid season, and it's certainly bittersweet. 

I definitely felt less frazzled hearing her sweet voice or containing her wiggles, knowing that these days are numbered and even though they were hard, they were beautiful too. So very beautiful. 

After church we spent the evening with the Millers. I always feel like my kids are missing out on the fun cousin memories at big holidays. They have far less cousins than I do and 2/3 of them live out of state. But I looked over at all of sweet kids playing Apples to Apples and realized that although they're holiday memories might be different than mine, they will still be filled with happy moments playing with friends whom we all consider family. 

We had appetizers/snacks for dinner.

While the kids played, the adults played Pandemic. 

We all laughed when Santa and Rudolph came by for a visit. 

We said goodbye to our friends around 9:00 that night and tried to get some excited kids to bed! There's nothing like the excitement and anticipation of Christmas Eve.