Christmas Eve

This year we had our second annual sandwich feast for Christmas Eve. My sister Rebecca mentioned that she does this every year (and in style, I might add, which you can see on her blog!), and Becca thought it sounded perfect. So, it's our new Christmas Eve tradition ... although we're going to have to up it quite a few notches to get to ridiculously delicious sandwiches like Rebecca and Rob have ...

Anyway, we ate and then gave the first gifts of the season to our Savior. This is a tradition we have done for many years, and we like having it be the first gift we give each year. We all choose something we want to work on extra hard the next year as a gift to the Savior. Mind you, we just read in Mosiah how when we serve the Lord He immediately blesses us and we can basically never get out of His debt. I think that made it fun for the kids this year to think they can try. :) Anyway, it's always fun to look at past years' gifts and see what we've tried to work on. This gift stays in a somewhat visible place in our home and is out all year round. (Sometimes we even pull it out for an FHE lesson to remind us what we need to be working on.)

Then it was time for our traditional jammies to be opened. I was excited about the kids' jammies this year! I was shooting for cheap and had gotten the cheapest ones I could find for the boys, which turned out to be thermals. Then I learned a really cool technique from aforementioned sister, and I turned their boring jammies into awesomeness. Yes, I took the nicknames they got from Uncle Brandon and put them on jammies:

The boys were THRILLED! As you can see, they couldn't pose without showing off their super hero identities.

And not to be outdone was their super hero sister:


She always poses how they do, and then later when she sees the pictures she asks, "What was I doing?" Exactly. So we also have to make sure to get a normal shot, too. This girl sure loves Ariel because of that beautiful red hair:


Becca was happy about her jammies, especially since they are especially warm and fuzzy and she says she's always cold in the basement:


Austin actually went first and didn't know what to do with his very first present ever. But what do babies do with anything and everything?


Once he got a little help he got them unwrapped and ended up matching Mommy:


I bought these when I was pregnant with Tyler but never used them -- the baby jammies are too big to use with a newborn, and usually when they do fit my babies are crawling and don't want a nightgown. Good thing Austin is content to do nothing so I could finally use these nearly 10 years later! :) And yes, I did just post a picture of myself on my blog in my jammies!

I mentioned before our free gift the kids would be getting, but I think I neglected to mention the size. This has been sitting in our family room just like this for three weeks. It's been so much fun for the kids to anticipate what it would be (mattress, anyone?).


To end the evening we put out treats for Santa, tracked him online (catching him in South Carolina visiting Brandon :) and got the kiddos into bed. Mind you, Santa's treats disappeared before the boys were asleep, which almost gave me a heart attack, but no harm was done ... phew! (The stresses Santas throughout the world have to go through! ;)