Christmas Eve 2016

We had a really fun Christmas Eve day where my parents visited to watch Abi open her birthday gift that arrived late. I will post more on that later. 

We listened to my favorite Christmas CD in the background pretty much all day.

There were cartoons watched and puzzles put together....

 

Abi threw out some reindeer food. 

 

We always make Cafe Rio burritos for dinner and the girls do not like those yet so Maddy started a new tradition (for them at least) of Christmas crepes. She loves to make crepes with Doug so they made those for she and Abi to have for dinner. 

 

After dinner we did our last devotionals with our Jesse Tree and did Christmas Eve scripture reading and then it was time to open the Christmas Eve box. 

We opened up the new game first- Scattergories. 

We played it before opening anything else. 

 

Then Maddy opened our new movie. 

New game and new movie...

Then it was finally time for our new pajamas and books!

Abi knew what they were getting as she helped me pick them out. We were so excited to be able to get them matching pajamas still. Maddy was SO happy that they had a cat theme.

They were really happy with their new books too.

Doug loved his new book- Tintin graphic novel collection.

We got Abi a collection of a few fairy books and Maddy a drawing book.

I love my new striped "elf" pajamas from Old Navy and I got The Chemist.

After this we read our new book...

Then it was time for the girls to go to bed. 

Soon after Doug and I settled down with our burritos and watched my favorite Christmas movie, The Bishop's Wife.

It was a lovely Christmas Eve!

Christmas Eve: Part Two

Soon it was time to open the rest of the gifts in the Christmas Eve box.

My favorite things in our box are our new Christmas pajamas and books. 

 

Abi went first. 

 

Then Maddy. 

 

"Hey! Our pajamas match!"

 

They loved having matching jammies! It doesn't happen as much anymore. 

Then it was Doug's turn. He always tells me not to get him new ones. He doesn't mind having only a couple of pairs to rotate. 

So I wrapped up some that he already had. 

 

He had been asking me for days if I knew where these were while I acted like I didn't know. 

"Oh! Here they are!" 

Haha. 

 

Then I opened mine but apparently have no picture of it. 

There were two more boxes for the girls. They thought they were going to be their books. 

I told them to open them at the same time. 

 

 They started getting so excited when they saw American Girl boxes. 

I bought their pajamas on American Girl's website during a sale a couple of months ago and they came with free matching pajamas for the dolls!

They LOVED them!

Next we gave them the real books. 

 

Abi got a My Little Pony book.

Maddy got some Berenstain Bear books. 

 

Doug got Illuminae. Since he doesn't read much he usually gets a book that I want to read. 

 

I got Mr. Lemoncello's Library and there are my pajamas, aka the most comfortable things in the world. These pants. I got them at Shopko and they feel like you are immersing your legs in warm water. Most comfortable thing I own. The shirt is just a long sleeve cozy tee shirt from Target.

We separated to all get into our new jammies. 

 

Time for pictures kids! 

They got their dolls into their pajamas too. 

 We needed to read The Night Before Christmas before bedtime so Maddy brought it to me.

And we snuggled while I read. 

 

We made Doug stick his leg in just for a picture. 

 

We got the milk and cookies ready for Santa. Madeline wrote the note for him. 

Abi left out a picture she drew of Santa and his Christmas cat for Santa to have with a thank you note for whatever he was bringing. 

 

Then we got the girls into bed. This is the only night of the year they beg to go to bed early. 

Maddy was the most excited I have ever seen her and kept saying, "I am so excited! I am so excited!" I had to go get my camera and get a picture of her face in bed. 

 

We tucked them in and they drifted off to sleep.