Monday, December 27, 2010

Christmas Eve Tradition

The older kids starting rolling in on the 23rd. It's so exciting to see them come in and the younger kids so glad to see them.

I love going to church for Christmas Eve candlelight services. Our church doesn't have any services on Christmas Eve, so we travel to other churches close to home. We wanted to go to one early, to give us time to do our family celebration. This year it was a debacle trying to get to church. First of all, we wanted to go to one at 4, but Beth didn't get here in time. We found one at 5 and Beth got home about 4:45. Beth and Greg went to their separate families' houses this year It was hard on them not to be together for Christmas. From now on, we'll have to share with Greg's family. We rushed to get everyone's coats and shoes on. By the time we got to the church it was 5:10. We drove around the crowded parking lot looking to see that people weren't dressed up, because we were very much not dressed up. We finally decide to go in. Here we go marching in, in the middle of their service, John leading the way with Elijah. I brought up the rear of our eight person parade with Abbey. The usher ushered us down an isle. We experienced our own Christmas object lesson, because there was no room for us, just like Mary and Joseph. So we have to all file out. It was quite embarrassing! We left as quickly as we could and decided that church wouldn't be on the agenda this year. Maybe next year?

When we get home, we all go for a walk around our neighborhood, admiring the luminaries that line all of our roads.


Our tribute to "Abbey Road"

Then we gather in our living room for Christmas music,


reading the Christmas story in Luke,



Bella's first Christmas


and opening presents from siblings to each other and their gifts to me and John.



Next, it's on to the kitchen to pig out on a smorgasbord of sweets, savories, and anything in between.
(In fact, Daniel was up at 2am with a horrible tummy ache from all the junk he had ingested!)


Then off to bed with visions of sugarplums dancing through our heads!

Tomorrow's post: Christmas day! Quite an "engaging" day! (hint, hint)

Photobucket 

1 comment: