Christmas Eve and other Christmas Festivities

Christmas was on a Friday this year which gave us the whole week for Christmas fun!! I had made sure that all my shopping (and most of my wrapping) was done before the kids got out of school and I was free to enjoy the entire week with my kids!

The first day of Christmas break gave us some gorgeous weather and the kids spent most of Monday morning playing outside!

Happy kids = happy mom!!

Monday afternoon we headed over to the Hales to play with cousins! 

Monday evening we all got together for Gingerbread house making.

More pictures to come later of our finished Gingerbread house (once I get them off my camera).

Wednesday night we went to see the lights on Gemini Street

Later that evening all the adults gathered at our house for our annual white elephant gift exchange. Sadly we didn't take any pictures from the night. We had quite the spread of delicious food and lots of fun gifts exchanged.

Thursday evening we all met at Boppi and Grandpa Al's house for Christmas Eve dinner. Aunt Lindsay made the cutest little elf name tags for each person. Wish I would have gotten a picture of our little family of elves all together!

Madi got to join the "big kids" table this year!! 

There were lots of silly kids at the "little kids" table and nobody would let me take a picture.

Well, at least without them knowing.... 

The adult table

After dinner, I helped get all the kids into costume and passed out scripts for the Nativity program. Since we had so many kids here this year I thought it would be fun for everybody to have a part and do something a little different. 

Kaitlyn and Madi made beautiful angels . . . 

Calvin was a perfect little shepherd . . .

Elle was over the moon excited that she finally got to play Mary this year!

I lined everybody up on the stairs in order of when they came on. Brittany and Sydney were the narrators and Keegan played Samuel and the donkey. 

Did I mention I couldn't get enough of this adorable shepherd!

The whole crew:

After the Nativity, Boppi gathered the kids all together to read a Christmas story.

Then Spencer, the kids and I headed for home to read The Night Before Christmas and put out cookies for Santa (they'd already sprinkled out the reindeer food in the lawn earlier that afternoon). 

Once the kids were snuggled into their beds, Spencer and I turned on a Christmas movie while I wrapped presents and he got other gifts put together. I love the excitement of Christmas eve and always know I won't get much sleep that night!