Christmas Eve

This year we spent Christmas Eve with the Huntsmans.  We just kept it casual, ordered pizza, made a few apps., used paper plates, etc.  It was so great.  We ate and then played rock band.  We haven't played Rock Band in a long time and it was really fun.  We had a lot of fun with the Huntsmans.

 Addie and Olivia.  They fight like cats and dogs sometimes but love each other!

 Parker, Owen and Ethan.

When the Huntsmans left, we went and put out the reindeer food.  Owen and Addie put theirs in a pile right by the front door but Parker put on his snow boots and ran around the whole front yard sprinkling it.  We got the kids in their pjs and read from Luke 2 and then read Twas the Night Before Christmas. Parker had a hard time going to sleep but that's normal.  He comes down pretty much every night saying he can't fall asleep.

Parker is such a sweet boy.  This is the note he left for Santa.  I love that he says he hopes Santa is bringing the toys Addie and Owen want and that he wishes "Santa a successful year" at the end!  He also wanted to make something for each of us and put it in our stockings right before he went to bed.  Mine was a sweet poem, Addie's a baby bottle made from play doh, Owen & Scott got their own baseball cards with their name, stats and pics he had drawn of them.

Since Scott and I were really prepared this year, we didn't have much to do so we watched a movie.  It was so great!  When we knew Parks was asleep, we brought down all the presents. We don't put out any of the presents until Christmas morning so it's more dramatic when they come down.  We went to sleep excited for Santa to come.

Parker acutally woke up at around 2:30am.  He came in and asked if he could go down and look to see if Santa had come.  He wanted me to come with him so we walked down and he had already come.  It thought Parks would want to go check everything out (even though Santa wraps the gifts so he couldn't actually see what was in them) but he didn't.  He just let out an excited squeal with a little jump and turned around and headed back upstairs and went to sleep.

Scott loves Christmas.  He loves the tree.  He comes in from work sometime and if the tree lights aren't on, he goes through the house turning on every tree's lights (we have 5 trees) and turning on the lights on the garland.  I love that he loves Christmas so much!  Here's the tree before we went to bed on Christmas Eve.