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Merry Christmas Eve

 We celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve at our house. Christmas day is for sleeping in (if you don't have kids) eating lots of treats, playing with your new toys, and enjoying the best day of the year for the best reason ever. Christmas Eve begins with the hanging of the stockings and setting out cookies for Santa. Then we go to church. Our house is one of Santa's first stops so he comes while we are at church. The boys were so excited this year and it was so. so. FUN!
 

Tradition holds that Santa brings one gift and you're pretty much guaranteed to get the gift you ask for. I didn't really grow up believing in Santa, but Tom's family is a Santa family so we have adopted the tradition. The story of St. Nicholas is a beautiful story and we read the story each year. The boys believe in the magic of Santa and his generosity beautifully illustrates that as exciting as it is to get a gift that you really want from Santa, Santa brings the gift to show you how much more excited you should be about Jesus...the BEST gift of all.



We came home from church and the boys found that Santa had indeed paid a visit and filled their stockings with just the right things and had brought them the gift they asked for. After Santa presents Marme and the boys made Jesus a birthday cake. The cake is round because Jesus' love never ends. The cake is chocolate to represent our sinful hearts and then frosted with white frosting to represent that Jesus makes our hearts as white as snow. On the cake there are three things: an angel to remind us of his birthday, and a yellow star candle to remind us of the star of Bethlehem and that Jesus lights the way, and a red star candle is to symbolize the blood that Jesus shed. Pappy read the Christmas story, we sang Happy Birthday to Jesus, and then opened more presents. The boys went to bed tired out from all the excitement and were up early to start the day with their new toys! Christmas Eve was pretty close to perfect. Ami and Uncle Will were home and that was present enough in my book. The only thing missing was Erik, who joined us on Skype to open presents, but it wasn't the same. Next year we will all be home for sure!




We took the annual family Christmas picture and after about 20 shots we were lucky enough to get one that looked like this.

To keep it real, most of the shots looked like this. Tom was being a goof ball, Aiden was picking his nose, Sage was not paying attention, and I had just given up trying to get everyone to behave. ;)

Comments

Sally said…
Wonderful Christmas eve and lovely meaningful traditions so God honoring' Thank you for sharing. Loved your honesty about the pics so true.
December 27, 2013 at 2:38 PM
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