the night before...

We had a nice relaxing Christmas Eve...
My mom, my dad, Ryan and I took the kids to go see Bolt in the theater in the late morning. There were precisely four other people in the theater besides us. That's my kind of movie! The show was cute and we all filled up on fruit snacks, teddy grahams, popcorn and lemonade.

I have to say it was sooo nice to not have anything to have to get done on Christmas Eve. In years past I know I've felt the rush of getting gifts ready, food prepped, etc trying to get everything done at the last minute and then of course spending the afternoon/evening at one of our parents' house or the other. Ever since moving away from all our family it's so different. For one, all our gifts have to be done and mailed out by the middle of the month, so there's no last minute scrambling in that arena. We don't have anywhere we need to be or much food to get together except for whatever we want for ourselves. Even with my parents here with us this year, it's just felt super relaxed and just fun waiting for our celebrations.

We came home from the movie Wednesday and napped and got a bit of wrapping done. Then we prepped some dinner to be in the oven while we went to our Christmas Eve service at church. Came back from church and had a great ham dinner and followed that up with everyone opening up their Christmas pajamas from under the tree. Then we spent a few minutes finishing up our advent puzzle, reading Christmas stories and the kids wrote letters to leave for Santa with the milk and cookies of course.





























Savannah's letter was pretty sweet this year; she simply wished Santa a Merry Christmas and asked him to tell Rudolph hello and then she let Santa know some things her brother and the rest of her family (including 'Gramma wants happiness and love for all of her families') wanted for Christmas and didn't even metion the things that had been on her list. I had to ask her when she was done if she was sure she didn't want to remind Santa of anything special she was hoping for herself. In the end, she did tack on the doll she asked for.





































We ended up with a whole pile of pictures and papers they wanted to leave for Santa...

















After the kids were in bed we finished up a bit of wrapping and Santa stuff but pretty much spent the evening just relaxing and enjoying the tree and the Christmas music and the anticipation of Christmas morning.

Only one more sleep 'till Christmas!!