Christmas Eve

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Christmas Eve always passes in a blur! I go to work that day like any other and Aaron is home with the kids. I always have a long list of things that didn't get done the night before and I need help getting done to be ready for Christmas Eve dinner after church. The kids are always a little high strung as the anticipation has built to a frenzy! To add more excitement to the day, we had horrific thunderstorms with tornado warnings and power outages. Aaron had his hands full!
By some miracle, we got everyone dressed for church and arrived in plenty of time for Sarah Graves to warm up for choir and for us to have seats for the service! 



The kids were super excited that Ms. Courtney had activity bags to keep them busy during the service and inside the bag was model magic!

SG sang in the children's choir.

A happy Livy!

After church we came back to our house for Christmas Eve dinner, which this year was gumbo. Ms. Janan and Evan came to enjoy dinner with us. 

Charlie was very excited to taste the cake he made and it was met with approval!

Starting from the moment we came home from church, the kids were begging to open presents. We haven't found a great way to spread out the gift opening yet, but we save most of them for Christmas Day. We always relent and let them open a few on Christmas Eve!

Sarah Graves was ecstatic to open a new coat for Grace and a suitcase full of travel accessories for Grace!

I love seeing the sheer joy of opening a gift that delights him!

I see why people like to give to children, they are so excited and joyful as they marvel at a new treasure.

One of the most pleasurable things this holiday season was seeing Sarah Graves so excited to give a gift. She and I went into Toys R Us on Black Friday and it didn't take her long to spot this Caillou doll. We hadn't seen it before and as we looked at it it was obvious it would be a great gift for Charlie. Caillou talks and responds to his teddy, cup, and snack. She couldn't wait to give him her gift and was so proud to give it. I love the maturity she is starting to get and her ability to think of others impresses me. 






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