We made the decision this year to be at our house for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. O and S are getting older and it just seemed like a good time to start our own traditions and be able to wake up in our own house, finding Santa's gifts and stocking fillers.
Grandma C came early to help us bake sugar cookies for Santa.
We quickly discovered Oliver has a serious sweet tooth and quickly discovered how good cookie dough is.
They were good cutters and we ended up with some interesting shapes and designs from them helping place them on the cookie sheets.
Though I don't have any pictures of it, we headed out on Christmas Eve morning to burn a little energy and went swimming at the Y. We hadn't been there since last winter/spring and O and S LOVED it. They are able to do so much more walking and playing in the water now and had a blast.
We came home for naps and upon waking, the Christensen family came over for pre-church appetizers and gift opening.
The cousins exchanged gifts and the princess and CARS pajamas that they received were a big hit.
We walked just a few blocks to Knox church for a nice Christmas Eve church service. The trick was just getting Oliver and Stella to stay relatively still and quiet for the 45 minutes. Stella did awesome and Oliver, well Grandpa C took him out to play for part of the service.
My favorite, and theirs too, part of the service is the candlelight singing of Silent Night. A beautiful reminder of all the blessings in our life.
We headed back to our house for some hot soup and a few more gift openings. And, of course, preparing cookies and milk for Santa. After getting them to bed for the night we starting wondering what the clock would start with the next morning when they woke up! More on that in the next post.......
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