Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was a day that was busy from the time we rolled out of bed in the morning until we sank back into bed at night. Even though we were busy, we were busy in a good way.

As soon as we finished breakfast, we busted out some crafts. First up on the craft agenda: a penguin ornament. I love when I find a craft that both of the girls can do. 

The second craft was a precious little snowman  that Mamo and Papo had sent for the girls to do. They sure do know how much the girls love to get crafty!

After the crafts were taken care of and hung up, we moved onto baking cookies. I had the two best (and cutest) little helpers around!

During the cookie decorating, Landry almost had a major catastrophe with the sprinkles. I just happened to catch her face when she realized that her cookie was nearly covered with green sprinkles. I love when I catch good faces with my camera!

The girls watched a holiday movie while Daddy and I got things ready for dinner. We had so much fun just letting the girls play and do "Christmasy Stuff". After our traditional junk food dinner we let the girls open their ONE Christmas Eve present which is always a new ornament for their tree.

Landry's ornament was a picture of her and her friends when they went to see Pinkalicious. She was so excited have a picture of her friends!

Ashton's ornament needs a little explanation. You see, I was all kinds of pumped when I found a softball ornament that I could customize with her name. So I did. Well...when I was wrapping it, I held it up to show Bobby and I noticed something on the back of the ornament (I didn't remember putting anything on the back). I took a closer look and discovered it had #13 printed on it....Ashton isn't and never has been #13. I nearly fell out! It couldn't have even been #11 so I could turn into it being the year 2011. NICE!!

So when she opened her ornament, she was super excited! The middle picture is when she looked at the back and saw the mistake. She looked at me and said, "I was number 13??"  Bobby and I fell out and had to explain what the number thirteen was all about. Now we have a funny story to go with her ornament. Good thing she has a great sense of humor! Good thing it happened with the 9 year old and not the 3 year old--can you imagine?!

After the girls were bathed and showered, I checked my email and found THE very much anticipated email from Santa.  We gathered around the computer and watched Santa's video messages from the North Pole.

They were glued to the screen and watched with tons of anticipation to see what Santa had to say about them this year.

They are always amazed that Santa has a picture of them in his book along with their age and grade.

This year the Big Guy mentioned (and had pictures) of Ashton playing softball. She was in total shock that he knew about her playing softball and how he  mentioned her team was lucky to have her.

After Big Sis watched her video and found out she was on the GOOD list this year, it was time for Landry's message.

She was a wee bit nervous watching to see if she was going to be on the good list or not. As you can tell in the third picture, she was jumping up and down with relief and excitement to know she was on the GOOD list.  Just as in ARB's message, Santa mentioned the fact that he was really proud of Landry and her big achievement from this year. He had a picture of her from way back in January when the Bink Fairy came to visit her. We all had to pick our jaws up off the ground when we saw that! That Santa is pretty impressive!

We had a few more things left to take care of before we tucked the girls into bed. One of our favorite traditions is going to see the Christmas Lights in our jammies. We drove through the famous "Deerfield" neighborhood since we had heard such great things about their lights....they did not disappoint at all. They were phenomenal! After driving through Deerfield, we had to check out the lights in our neighborhood. The girls were pretty excited to see the house by Ashton's school who had their lights set to music on a radio station just like Merry Main Street.

The girls made reindeer food, poured Santa a glass of milk and set out the cookies they made especially for him.

One last picture before we headed upstairs to bed. We were all ready for Santa to make his appearance. Daddy and the girls checked NORAD one last time to see where he was.

We got the girls all tucked in and snug in their beds. I don't know how they do it, but they both drifted off to dreamland pretty quickly on Christmas Eve. They are always so giddy and excited to see if Santa is going to bring them what they wished for on Christmas morning.

I absolutely love the magic of Christmas. I love the twinkle and joy in their eyes as they fill with anticipation to see what tomorrow brings. We also can't have Christmas Eve without talking about how we are so thankful for Jesus being born and Jesus' birthday is the reason for Christmas!