Christmas Eve

I was still sick on Christmas Eve but needed to get all the prep work done for dinner and the prep done for all my Christmas day sides so I spent the morning cooking. Nonny and Poppy arrived at 1:30 with lots of presents! Nonny brought a 300 piece puzzle that we all (minus daddy, poppy, and ephram) worked on throughout the day, evening, and next morning.

the tradition in my house growing up was to eat spaghetti with crab sauce and crab legs on Christmas eve (all Italian). we looked forward to it all year long! this year the crab was too expensive so we ate baked ziti, shrimp and linguini, salad, and garlic bread. we ate early so the non sick family members could go to church. i LOVE Christmas eve service at our church and was super sad to miss it but was encouraged by friends NOT to get people sick. ephram really wasn't feeling good either and had been grumpy all day so we kept him home.

dressed up so nice! missed my picture by the trees at church this year

while they were gone ephram (who was grumpy) was SPOILED by Nonny and Poppy while I was still getting things cleaned up and ready. he played Christmas carols with poppy,

went fishing,

laced beads, did pegs, read books,

and became a reindeer:)

When they got home we all got dressed in our Christmas jammies so we could continue the traditions. First we opened up our 'Jesus presents' to reveal what we had chosen.

kinsey chose bibles, cailey chose 13 small animals,
braden chose mosquito nets, brian chose seeds, and i chose
clean water! everyone actually kept it a secret and was excited to
reveal it. i'd have to say that braden was the MOST excited about the
whole experience and loved telling everyone what he chose.

After Brian read from Luke they did their final advent calendar door and ephram put baby Jesus on the board. Then everyone attacked Nonny with a goodnight hug and headed to bed:).