Christmas Eve is one of my favorite days of the year. I think it's kind of a bigger deal in my family than it is in most because of the whole Norwegian thing. We eat pinnekjot a traditional Norwegian dish that nobody but the immediate family likes, so we also have ham for all the boys. In Norway Santa comes on Christmas Eve and they open all of their presents so we do a thing where he comes and brings a few presents for the kids to open but also comes later when they are asleep with the rest. Unfortunately, we have kind of a crappy Santa suit that doesn't fit my Dad so Curtis does it. This year I overheard Brianna telling her little sister Sabrina that Santa would probably be really tan. It's a work in progress. The little kids all gather round in awe, but they are also a little afraid. The babies are a lot afraid, actually. We also do a pageant of the story of the baby Jesus with the little kids playing the parts. This year we had two Mary's because Afton and Brielle couldn't agree on who got to do it so they decided to compromise. They both got to play her in different scenes.
Joseph and Mary traveling to Bethlehem.
The angel announcing the birth to the shepherds
The baby Jesus in the manger didn't turn out so well
because all the other babies decided they wanted the
manger for themselves.
The entire cast!
We slept over at Rachael and Nick's new house (I'll get some pictures of it up soon.) and had Christmas morning with them. Rachael had all the presents hidden in their closet so we set them all out after the kids had gone to bed so there would be a huge pile in the morning like Santa had come. Then we got up at about seven thirty cause Nick got to come home a half hour early and opened presents. They have a tradition in Nick's family that they are carrying on, where it starts from the oldest to the youngest but when it is your turn you go to the tree and choose a present for someone else to open. We thought it was a good way to focus on other people while opening presents.
