Christmas Eve

Mixing up Sugar cookies for Santa.
Our candle light dinner. A tradition of ours. The kids love that we get to have candles.

Christmas Jammies!

Jane with Papa

Below: Setting up for Christmas morning while wathching a little "Home Alone".

Christmas Eve was mostly a day of preparation and cooking. That morning we just kind of took things easy and in the afternoon we made dinner. Last year we finally got smart and set the table for a really nice dinner with tablecloth and Christmas dishes but ordered in Cafe Rio Pork Salads. It was awesome. There was no prep or clean up and yet it was still a nice and tasty meal. This year we thought we would replicate last year only there isn't a cafe Rio. In fact, we have yet to find any good mexican. Taco bell would be looking good about right now. Anyway we found various recipies on line for the pork, the rice, beans and salad dressing. I have to say the salads turned out awesome and we were in heaven.

Before dinner we delivered some gifts to some member of our ward and then drove surrounding neighborhoods to see the luminaries. It was fun to see the Christmas decorations and luminaries around town. People here decorate differently than in Utah. It is pretty low key and what is mostly seen is candles in the windows and wreaths and boughs. That's it. NO lights on the eve's of the houses or anything. I actually really like it. There is something that says Christmas to me about seeing an entire neighborhood in Utah with all the housetops all lit up, but I also really found it maybe old fashioned and charming the way it is done here. Just very traditional.

After our driving around we had dinner and then sang some peppy Christmas tunes then I played a little calmer Christmas music on the piano to calm things down. Then we read Luke 2 and sang some more reverent and applicable songs like "Away in a Manger" and "Silent night". The kids were still pretty wound up so we let them watch the old school version of "The Grinch who stole Christmas."

Ethan was actually asleep before we even turned on the movie. The girls on the other hand were for sure not ready for bed. Soon after that my parents went back to their hotel and we got things set up for Santa to come. Thankfully this year I had everything all wrapped, so we just had to set the scene if you will for Christmas morning. We actually went to bed at 10pm which has to be some sort of record. I went to sleep immediately. 7 months of sleep deprivation can't be cured with 3 good nights sleep. Thankfully Jane slept through the night so that was the best gift ever!