Christmas Eve

Ryder's baptism was the 23rd and the next day was Christmas Eve!  And we had SO MUCH COOKING to do!

Ryder with Grandpa Rex!

The family that stares at their devices together...

Eliot is enrolled in a hiphop dance class, so he was teaching Ryder his moves!

We had to take Leah and Brian to Carter Mountain (this may have been on the 22nd?  I can't remember now...).  As soon as Leah decided to buy doughnuts, she was like the Pied Piper with all the kids following her!

I got up and immediately started on the turkey brine and mashed potatoes and rolls (which I quadrupled).  Craig eventually brined the turkey and then once Jeni came they got to work on pies.  (Craig makes wonderful pies, but since they needed to be gluten-free, we figured we'd let Jeni be in charge of the crusts, and Craig could do the rest!)  I also wandered around wrapping last-minute things that either had just been delivered (thanks, Amazon!) or hidden away and forgotten about!

Little kids put on a play for me!

Camille was happy to flirt it up with her favorite Uncle Jason!

At this point I was on dish duty

Of course we had our traditional pizza, which I ordered and was sort of proud of myself because we had exactly the right amount.  Tom and Donna picked it up for us, which was a great help. 

And after pizza, we sang Christmas carols... 

We made Bentley accompany everyone on Joy to the World

And Kendra got to accompany for Away in a Manger

Craig saw this picture and said, "I had no idea I looked so angry when I sing!"

We all read Luke 2 together and then opened up our Christmas jammies!  Craig and Kendra had picked out the pajamas this year, and since they went shopping fairly early in November, they decided to buy leftover Halloween costume onesies for everyone.  The results were SPECTACULAR:

I'm a giraffe, Craig is a bumblebee, Ryder is a dinosaur, Bentley is a camouflage shark (???), Kendra is a zebra, Camille is a penguin, and Colton is a dragon.  AWESOME.

That is a very excited Ryder hugging his big sister there

I thought Colton looked like Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon

Eliot and Theo also got pajamas, but theirs were a bit classier than ours!

My Dad thought our tails/stingers were obscene.  If he thinks there's anything sexy about this, he might be even weirder than we are!

The hilarious thing is how much I LOVE my giraffe pajamas.  They are SO comfortable, I want to wear them all the time!  It occurs to me that this is a very slippery slope...

Once everyone was done laughing at admiring our pajamas we sent the kids to bed and all of Craig's family headed back to Culpeper for the night.  And Craig and I got back to work-- we still had a lot to do that night!