Christmas Eve at home

We really enjoyed doing Christmas with the kids this year. They're getting old enough to enjoy the different traditions that we're doing as a family and understanding how special of a time of year it is.

For Christmas Eve we did our traditional finger food buffet and then headed downstairs to watch The Polar Express with the kids. We weren't sure how they would take it, if it would frighten them or not, and actually, we're still not sure! Elijah's face was this...pretty much the entire movie!

He really likes trains, so I think he enjoyed the movie because of that, but I was just amazed at how entranced he was throughout the movie! I'm glad he enjoyed it! At least I think he did! : ) We all did. Abigail was pretty entranced as well. And now that I think about it, there were two places in the movie that we skipped, the broken toy scene and one other one-can't remember which.We had to keep reminding Elijah to "eat your food while you watch the movie!"


Caleb spent most of his time practicing his new walking skills. He had been taking steps for at least a month and on the 20th (the day he turned 13 months) he decided to take the plunge and make it his official mode of transportation! So that evening, he just walked around, playing with the kitchen,

 playing with Abigail's doll, carrying it around, kissing it, giving it CPR or whatever he was doing! : )

 And playing "peek-a-boo" with me! We had fun together while the rest enjoyed the movie!

After that, we headed upstairs to get the stockings put by the fireplace and some cookies and milk set out for Santa! It was the kids' first time to do that and they were pretty excited!!

A few pictures of the kiddos by the tree, reading the story of Jesus birth and The Night Before Christmas and they were off to bed! Joel had the cookies ate and milk drank by 7:30 and they weren't evening having visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads yet! Abigail and Elijah can be a couple yoyo's at bedtime, so I was worried that they would notice their cookies had already been eaten, but even though they did come out a couple times, they didn't notice.