Christmas Eve

Thursday night, after such a sad day, it was nice to drive around as a family and deliver MORE plates of cookies to everyone who lived in Keswick and Lake Monticello.  We had way better luck, too, in that every single house we stopped at (all six of them) had people at home!  A Christmas miracle indeed!  I love making that drive, keeping a lookout for good Christmas lights, and listening to all the Christmas music.  It was a really fun.  It was also insanely cold, around 9 degrees?, so I sat in the car with the heat running while everyone else did the actual door delivering.  This was doubly perfect, because no one wanted to chat long with it being so cold, but I can never end a conversation; they would have HATED me if I'd stood there rambling on while all their heat wafted out their open front doors!  So I was doing everyone a favor by staying in the (warm) car.

The next morning, Christmas Eve, was too cold to run.  But I did get all bundled up and walked a few houses down the street just to see what that felt like.  My face wasn't covered, and as soon as it started feeling numb, I headed back inside.  We did a quick, frantic clean up before Grandma and Grandpa arrived, and then I hopped into the shower.  Even from in there, I could suddenly hear my kids thundering around downstairs and knew that noise heralded the arrival of their grandparents.  Oh, the excitement!

While Grandpa kept the kids busy playing games, Grandma and Craig did a lot of cooking that day.  They got the turkey brining, made a caramel pie, cinnamon rolls, and boiled sweet potatoes.  I worked on making my grandma's green jello salad.  I think I napped in there, somewhere, too.  And, knowing me, I probably did laundry.  (Someone has to keep the rest of the house running!)  And after the little kids were in bed, we made an apple crumble.  

We got our usual Christmas Eve pizza-- this time from the new Christian's Pizza that opened up near us.  (When we moved to Charlottesville our realtor bought us pizza from the Christian's Pizza on the downtown mall-- it's a C-ville thing, so having another one even closer was exciting!)  Then I practiced piano for a bit while the kids showered, and then we drove around looking at Christmas lights.  Our favorite tacky house was NOT lit up (although it had lights in place, they just weren't turned on???  maybe the owners were out of town that day...?), so that was disappointing, but Craig found out about a farm that some guy sets up to be a free drive-through light show, so that made up for it!  Who does awesome things like that???  I love that there are people out there like that!

Then we sang Christmas carols, with each of the kids doing their best on the piano...

Here we are having a lovely time singing and Bentley pulls his muppet face

So Craig was like, SMILE!  And he did!

We read Luke 2, and opened up our jammies from my parents.  This year's set was pretty fun:

I thought these shirts were pretty hilarious, and I loved that each kids' was a little different!

And we wrapped up with me reading The Night Before Christmas to everyone before they went to bed!

Despite all my nagging, Colton and Camille's room is a mess

I can only assume that visions of sugar plums danced in their heads.  Craig and I enjoyed the chance to finally sit down for a bit and just enjoyed the peace and quiet while we looked at our Christmas tree.  I think Christmas Eve is my favorite day of the year.  You gotta love all that joy and anticipation!