Christmas Eve

I love, love, love Christmas! I think this year topped every one we have had so far. It was so fun and exciting having a kid who was excited about Santa and the Christmas traditions. Christmas Eve was spent with family and friends and it was wonderful!

One of my most favorite things about Christmas is the Christmas cards we receive. I know not many people send them out anymore, but we loved the ones we got. Andy spent hours on a stool sitting in front of our pantry door where we had them all taped up.
First we had an early Christmas Dinner before Kylie had to take Tucker to his dad's house for the rest of the week. We had wonderful delicious food!

The boys enjoyed their post dinner cage...jaxon wasn't too happy wit this arrangement. 

 After dinner we had the missionaries over for a wonderful Christmas message. we got two new missionaries this week, so they were working hard on getting to know the members. We loved having them over and invited them over for Christmas brunch so they could call their families. Aj wanted to show them his poems from school so we recorded them again. I hope you don't get sick of them.

Chubby Little Snowman

Away in a Manger

Clop Clop Clop

My family decided that this year we would start a new tradition that would take place every other year. Instead of giving gifts to our siblings we would do an act of service or choose a charity to donate to. We were planning on helping the high school band with their fund raising for all state, but on Christmas Eve morning the bishop called saying he was made aware of a family that was in need. We ditched our previous plann, got together with another family and put together a great Christmas for this family. We packed up a Christmas dinner, gifts, stockings, and extra food. It felt really good to be giving.

The boys helped us wrap and pack the gifts.

After we got back we kicked into Christmas Eve gear. Kylie had just gotten back from dropping off Tucker and wanted to join in the festivities. We got on our pajamas, read our traditional stories and made our cookies for Santa!

The boys set out their stockings and went to sleep without an ounce of arguing (which is odd). We set to work getting all of our presents wrapped and helping Santa set up the gifts. Now off to bed!