We spent Christmas Eve with family at Michael's sister Kathy's home. We incorporated one of our Christmas Eve traditions and ordered out for Chinese food (hooray!) and had a nice dinner together, laughing and talking. Then Dave helped the kids track Santa Claus online - which got them really excited!
After tracking Santa we gathered everyone together and had a Family Home Evening using the Christmas lesson from the Nursery manual. It was perfect for the kids! At one point, Dave was showing the kids a picture from the book, and the next thing he knew Jacob was on his knee with his face inches away from the picture...apparently Jacob was very into the story. After the lesson, Phillip read the book "The Christmas Oranges" to us and we all shared some oranges like the children did in the story. Then Kathy brought out chocolate oranges. Yum!
Kathy made a birthday cake for Jesus for the kids - Jacob was having such a good time, I couldn't even get him to look at me for a picture. No wonder why it was always so hard to sleep on Christmas Eve - you are anxious for Santa, and then your mom gives you more sweets in one night than you have had in months, oh my...the joys of childhood. :)
After cake Phillip played with the kids while we got regrouped for the Nativity story. I don't think the sugar had quite hit them yet...
Kathy read a story of the Nativity to the kids and let them set up her nativity while they went through the story. Their nativity had so many fun pieces and details...perfect for a 3 year old!
Jacob and Kayla were so happy with their nativity, not to mention the sugar high...
Kathy was a great story-teller! Here is the final set-up :)
After the nativity, we all got to open a gift...of new PJ's! We thought we would try that out this year, I loved it! We seem to try at least one different tradition each year...maybe that's our tradition! haha.
Jacob loves his big truck PJ's.
Because Christmas is always more fun with little kids, we decided to stay the night with the family at Kathy and Dave's house. We put Jacob and Kayla to bed in Kayla's room...but as we expected, they did not go to bed. Who knows what sort of crazy things they were doing up there, but we could not help but let them for a little while...after all, it was Christmas and Jacob's first time sleeping over somewhere and not sleeping next to us. I don't know how many times we could hear them laughing at the window looking at the Christmas lights outside and wondering if they could see Santa coming. Even the threats of Santa not coming if they were not asleep did not work at all! I think at one point I even told Jacob that if he did not go to bed I would tell Santa to keep his presents...but then I laughed at myself - and that was over. Grandma Carol (Michael's mom) went up to their room at 10pm to try to get them settled down, and told them the story of Goldilocks and the 3 bears. When Jacob heard the part of the story about Goldilocks coming into the bears house, Jacob jumped off his bed and stood up with his hand high in the air and told my mother-in-law "If I got to that house and saw Goldilocks there, I would kick her off the team! She would never kick a soccer ball again!!". :)
After cake Phillip played with the kids while we got regrouped for the Nativity story. I don't think the sugar had quite hit them yet...
Kathy read a story of the Nativity to the kids and let them set up her nativity while they went through the story. Their nativity had so many fun pieces and details...perfect for a 3 year old!
Jacob and Kayla were so happy with their nativity, not to mention the sugar high...
Kathy was a great story-teller! Here is the final set-up :)
After the nativity, we all got to open a gift...of new PJ's! We thought we would try that out this year, I loved it! We seem to try at least one different tradition each year...maybe that's our tradition! haha.
Jacob loves his big truck PJ's. 
Because Christmas is always more fun with little kids, we decided to stay the night with the family at Kathy and Dave's house. We put Jacob and Kayla to bed in Kayla's room...but as we expected, they did not go to bed. Who knows what sort of crazy things they were doing up there, but we could not help but let them for a little while...after all, it was Christmas and Jacob's first time sleeping over somewhere and not sleeping next to us. I don't know how many times we could hear them laughing at the window looking at the Christmas lights outside and wondering if they could see Santa coming. Even the threats of Santa not coming if they were not asleep did not work at all! I think at one point I even told Jacob that if he did not go to bed I would tell Santa to keep his presents...but then I laughed at myself - and that was over. Grandma Carol (Michael's mom) went up to their room at 10pm to try to get them settled down, and told them the story of Goldilocks and the 3 bears. When Jacob heard the part of the story about Goldilocks coming into the bears house, Jacob jumped off his bed and stood up with his hand high in the air and told my mother-in-law "If I got to that house and saw Goldilocks there, I would kick her off the team! She would never kick a soccer ball again!!". :)We stayed up late playing games and talking - it was such a wonderful Christmas Eve. I think Guesstures is now one of my favorite games! Not to mention all the jokes, movie lines and You Tube videos we laughed at. :)
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