Christmas Eve

We celebrated Christmas with Shane's family on Christmas Eve this year. It changes every year with his family because of everyone's work schedules. That morning, Shane did his annual Guy's Shopping Day with my Dad, Brent, Luke and Matthew which consists of a few hours of shopping and then lunch and beers and golf arcade for a few hours more! Then in the afternoon everyone came over to my house to do Christmas. Shane and I made taco's for everyone. I love having something way non-traditional on Christmas Eve. That's my tradition. :) Anyway...my parents make the best tacos ever and we wanted to share that with Shane's family. We had all the yummy toppings on the table and then Shane fried up the corn tortillas to make shells. So good! After dinner we opened gifts. Christy and the kids were in North Carolina visiting her family so Justin represented for them. The kids were so excited about gifts...they were bouncing off the walls! They loved everything they got and were even really good watching everyone else open gifts. Cookie decorating came next. I just wasn't feeling the cookie baking this year like I usually am so I bought some sugar cookies from Publix instead of making my own. They were amazing by the way. :) I did whip up some frosting and set out a ton of decorations so all the kids could make cookies for Santa. We all had a lot of fun and it ended up being a later night than I had planned. When everyone left, the girls threw their reindeer food out on the front lawn, put their cookies and milk out for Santa and we got them ready for bed. Shane and I got the stockings and gifts ready and then crashed ourselves. I really love being the parent at Christmas time. It's so fun making everything magical for your kids!

 So many gifts!

  The cousins

 So easy to buy for...he LOVES Angry Birds! :)

 Totally don't get minecraft but Jayden loved the gift we got him

 Seriously my favorite pic!

 Sabrina and Colby

 The cookie decorating

 So happy this actually turned out

 Natalie and Heidi wrote their own letters to Santa. Heidi also drew a picture...that is Santa after he comes down the chimney because he is so dirty. :) She wrote her letter all by herself too.

I love this letter from my adorable first grader. So sweet! We watched all the Santa Clause movies before Christmas this year and it really changed how she viewed Santa. We looked up how old Santa is for her too...1,743 years old. :)