Christmas Eve

Each year we have a wonderful Christmas Eve Party at Nana's house. Some of Dave's extended family come and so our kids love having the regular cousins plus second cousins too. We always have an amazing dinner, games and the nativity by the children.

Kate started taking more and more steps!

 Maybe the worst picture of me - ever..not sure why I'm standing like a man but, the best shot we got. 

Dave and I are usually in charge of games, which is so fun

  Ashley wanted to be the donkey for the nativity. There are a hundred costume options but, no donkey so we improvised. It was actually great because she was thrilled to be an animal and one less girl to fight about being Mary. 

 Andrew and Cam surprised us all by insisting on being Angels. Yikes. 

Hailey was also an Angel, though she had to be coerced into it. 

 We stayed at the party way too late. We came home for a quick bedtime for very tired kids but, not before Katie had a few minutes to show off her Yoga-Baby moves and her walking too.  

She's got it! So, for the record she started taking a step here and there at the beginning of December. By mid-December she could cross a room and by Christmas Eve (15 months exactly) she had it. As I write this she is 15 and 1/2 months and is walking well and even cracking us up with her backwards walking. She falls down often and does still crawl a little bit too, so she's happy to use all sorts of different ways to get around. 

 This Christmas I tried to stay very organized by keeping a good record of each gift as I bought them and wrapping a bit each night the week leading up to Christmas. I felt like I did a really good job but, Christmas Eve came and I still ended staying up until 3am wrapping, wrapping, wrapping, wrapping and wrapping. We had way too many presents for the kids and like every year, next year I'm going to try to scale back a bit. 

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All finished! The presents all wrapped, a note from Santa, wrapping supplies left out for Santa to borrow, and Candy Cane the Elf, ready with his gift to us: a plate of Candy Canes, of course.  

This year we had our first Elf on the Shelf. His name was Candy Cane and he is a cute red headed elf with green and red striped clothes, rather than the official Elf on the Shelf. He acted exactly like anyone else's elf except that he cost $1, which made him much better, plus he is way more cute. We had a great time with him. Most nights were a struggle to remember but, luckily it always got done except once. The kids absolutely loved searching for him each morning! On Christmas morning he showed up near the Christmas Tree sitting on a plate full of candy canes. 

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Santa left some fun things in everyone's stockings too. I think the kids would've been happy with just these little do-dads.