Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was such a beautiful day! The sun was shining gloriously that afternoon, and it was perfect sledding weather! There wasn't enough snow to go sledding down the hill by our home, so we decided to pull the sleds behind the 4-wheeler in the field above our house instead.

Josh drove the 4-wheeler and pulled the older 3 boys. Kanyon opted to stay inside since he wasn't interested in joining the activity.

 

Tiki joined us, though. She loved following the boys and she ran & ran around the field trying to keep up with them!

 

Then I offered to drive the 4-wheeler, so Josh could ride with the boys on the sled behind. I don't believe I've ever drove it pulling sleds before, but it ended up being fun and it gave Josh the rare opportunity to ride instead of drive.

 

I got into the hang of it pretty quickly and drove for a long while...until everyone was soaking wet and cold from falling off too many times! Then we decided to stop and go back home to warm up.

After warming up with some hot cocoa, we relaxed for a bit and watched a movie together before Josh grilled us some pork chops for dinner. We've never had a traditional Christmas Eve dinner, but we are trying to do some Christmas Eve traditions each year with our family. One of those traditions is reading the Luke 2 story about the Savior's birth, and having the boys place the characters in a nativity scene as Josh reads about them.

In addition to that, we also watched a Nativity movie this year that we received as a gift from some friends. Then I made a delicious beverage that I'd been craving (I remember having it at a winter party a few years ago): I combined vanilla ice cream, egg nog, and ginger ale and it tasted like an eggnog shake. It was good and was a nice bedtime snack.

And everybody liked it except Kanyon, who put his share in Santa's cup instead!

After we got the children nestled all snug in their beds, Josh and I got to work to finish wrapping up all their gifts. The Christmas tree was in our Family Room this year (a first!) instead of the Living Room. The boys' rooms all open up to the Family Room, and Josh and I were concerned that they'd wake up and come out to the tree before we were ready for them to on Christmas morning, so Josh stringed their door handles together, ensuring that we'd know if they did escape! We'd never done that before, either! So when we were all done wrapping presents for the night, I went outside and checked on the boys through their windows to make sure they were asleep. And it appeared as though they were (although I found out later that they saw me outside taking pictures at 11:30!!!), because all I could see was their little Christmas trees in their rooms and no children playing.

Ammon's

Jonah & Micah's



Kanyon's

And the little deer that Josh put on the roof of the house anxiously awaited the arrival of Santa! He couldn't wait to be picked up by his reindeer friends and taken to the North Pole!

 

 

And Santa did arrive that night! The tree was overflowing with gifts for our family! We were so blessed!