Christmas Eve

This was our second year to spend Christmas Eve at our very own home in Florida. It's a bit of an adjustment to not travel "home" to Kentucky, and I miss the holiday magic that my mom creates (she is truly Mrs. Christmas!). But it's a special feeling to establish the same holiday traditions with my own family. I feel like I'm carrying the torch of Christmas splendor passed to me by my parents! I truly feel blessed to carry on these special traditions with my children. I also feel blessed that Michael's parents were able to join us for Christmas again this year. It's always a treat to have them here, but especially on holidays since they make everything super-special!

Here's Michael and me getting ready to enjoy our steak dinner on Christmas Eve. Michael has grilled out steaks the past two years to give me and his mom a break from cooking. My family used to have steak on Christmas Eve years ago, but my mom can't stand the mere sight of pink in a steak, so my dad finally told her to make something else since she kept cooking the steaks reeeeally well. ha! But I have good memories of eating steak on Christmas Eve as a very special treat.





I got to enjoy my meal since there were extra hands to hold AK! (Anna Kate below doing the tongue thing and snuggling with Mimi). (below) Michael reading about the birth of Jesus from the book of Luke. This is something my dad did with us every Christmas Eve, and it's something that we'll always do with our children.





Wesley making cookies for Santa. One of his favorite books is called Are You Grumpy, Santa?, and it's all about how Santa has a particularly terrible Christmas Eve one year. Everything goes wrong until Santa reaches a point of despair and exclaims, "I'M A GRUMPY SANTA CLAUS!!!" (Wesley loves to read that line himself!). But then Santa spots cookies and a note from a child saying, "We made you all these cookies 'cause we love you, Santa Claus." It cheers him up and the book ends with, "So remember, make them chocolate, silky smooth, or extra lumpy... just be sure to leave some cookies, in case Santa's feeling grumpy!" So Wesley truly seemed to understand the purpose behind us making cookies on Christmas Eve!





Our attempt at a family photo. This is about as good as it gets these days! That's Wesley's surf'n shirt, by the way. He wore it for two days straight (including sleeping in it). I thought he was going to wear it until it rotted off, but after wrestling it off him tonight (met with much struggling and crying), I explained that it was dirty and that Mommy wanted to wash it in the swishy-swishy so it would smell good. I asked him if he would put it in the swishy-swishy for me. He smiled and took off running for the laundry room where he hurled it on top of the washing machine.

Wesley proudly carrying his cookies. We told him to set the cookies down on the fireplace, But instead he sat himself down on the fireplace and proceeded to run a little taste test of Santa's cookies!









Reading Twas the Night Before Christmas to Wesley. My dad always read The Grinch Who Stole Christmas to us on Christmas Eve after reading from the Bible. We don't have the Grinch book (plus, it's been made into a major motion picture, so it doesn't seem quite as charming to me as it used to). Our neighbor gave us this gorgeous copy of Twas the Night Before Christmas when Wesley was a baby, and we decided to make it our special Christmas Eve book. After that we read "Grumpy Santa" (as Wesley calls it) two or three times before finally getting the kids to bed.





Very late on Christmas Eve, hours after Wesley and Anna Kate fell asleep, I tip-toed into the den to see if Santa had come yet... Santa had come, and I took this photo to prove it! He even ate the cookies - I hope he wasn't grumpy!!