Christmas Eve Traditions

This year we had Christmas with Jon's family which meant we didn't have to go anywhere!  This allowed for a much more relaxed holiday.

The family came over for Christmas Eve dinner followed by the kids' Nativity reenactment and opening gifts from other families.

I feel ya, buddy.  It's almost child abuse to make them do this thing every year.  It's always good for a laugh, though.

Since most of our Christmas decor is in storage along with the majority of our other belongings, we had to wing it with stockings this year and decided to get the cheap stockings and make an activity of decorating them together.  It was a lot of fun and provided much laughter!  I'm pretty sure my Christmas tree drawing hasn't improved since first grade.

Funny story behind the kids stockings:  Jonah wanted to add "Christmas lights" to his stocking so he asked Jon for some M&Ms to glue on.  Well, we had a huge bag of Costco trail mix and when we looked back over, they had added nuts, raisins, etc.  We just laughed and had to remind ourselves that we'd only be using these stockings this year.  We had to let them dry overnight before we could attempt picking them up without all the nuts falling off! LOL.

 

We had the kids hang their stockings just before going to bed on Christmas Eve which got them all riled up for the morning to come.

and then Santa came.