Christmas Eve Traditions

Ah, the holidays! A time of relaxation. A time to enjoy spending time with your family. Everyone is happy. . .things are not stressful. It's a joyous and lovely time of the year. We focus totally on the TRUE meaning of this season. . .the birth of Jesus. This is the setting that I have in my mind.

Alas, the true picture of our holidays is more like this.

Wake up and GO, GO, GO! Screaming and chaos! See this side of the family! See that side of the family! This side of the family is mad that you see that side of the family more! Snide comments! Who can buy more gifts? GO, GO, GO some more! Kids end up being totally overwhelmed. The back of our car is stuffed with more presents than we can possibly fit in this house and the kids are so over everything that they just want to sit and watch TV and they don't play with anything. Good times, folks, good times!

Most of that is exaggerated and said in jest but there is a little truth to it! Seriously, this is a snippet of everything we crammed into Christmas Eve. Christmas Day is a WHOLE OTHER post, my friends!

We woke up Christmas Eve morning to our elf, R.W. having gotten hold of all of our icing and sprinkles and gone to town on some old cookies that we had sitting around. He really went all out on his last day with us this year. Thank goodness he left a little icing and sprinkles so we could make some cookies for Santa.

I decided to take a step back from being the typical control freak that I usually am and actually let my kids roll out their own dough and decorate the cookies TOTALLY on their own. Novel idea, huh? And then I got a look at how "fancy" they were getting and I had to sit down and make a couple on my own just so we would have a few that looked. . . how can I say this nicely. . .NORMAL? What is wrong with me?

I made two cookies on this plate. I'll let you guess which two.

Mia lost control a little with the yellow can of icing. She just couldn't help herself. We spent a couple of hours making all of these lovely gingerbread cookies and then guess what happened? No one would eat a single one. Except for me (and I was very choosy).

The kids proclaimed these cookies works of art and plus (insert eye roll from Maddie) "DON'T I KNOW THAT NONE OF THE LIKE GINGERBREAD????" Um, no. Do you eat gingerBREAD, kids? Yes. Do you eat those favorite cookies from the Czech stop in West that are gingerbread men, kids (after you pick the raisin eyes and buttons off) Yes. But will you eat gingerbread cookies that you just spent hours rolling out, cutting with cookie cutters and decorating? Nope. Wouldn't think of touching them. BIG SIGH.

So, then we made snickerdoodles because EVERYONE (all eyes on me) knows that those are Santa's favorite. I didn't take a picture of that escapade because I was too beaten down. But I did it. And they were good.

Next up on the agenda for Christmas Eve was a little run with Carley and Colleen because we were still kind of in running mode from the half marathon. But, we failed to take into account that it was SUPER windy and the temperatures were falling by the minute. So, needless to say, our 6 mile run turned into a MAYBE 2.5 mile run and it was SLOW and we complained the whole way. But at least we got that blood pumping for a little while!

One of my FAVORITE Christmas traditions has become the annual Polar Bear swim in our pool by our crazy (and I mean that in the NICEST way possible and I only call them crazy on this one day out of the year) Norwegian neighbors.

Katrina tried to coax Jakob into leaping at the same time, but he decided to take the plunge from the side of the pool rather than taking the flying leap off the waterfall. I cannot even imagine every forcing myself to do that. My kids REALLY wanted to join in and I thought about it for two seconds and then thought about the fact that if anyone can come down with pneumonia in a matter of 12 hours then it would be my 4 children and we were SO CLOSE to getting through a holiday without someone going down with an illness so I had to be the mean mom and say no.

HOLY MOLY! That water was COLD!

Not only did she jump, but she swam all the way across the pool and didn't even take the short way out. Impressive!

Jakob's turn! Do you know any other 3rd graders who would do this?

First and last swim for December. . . . check that off the list!

Just call him the Pioneer Man! Rob spent several hours during the afternoon making the Pioneer Woman's homemade cinnamon rolls. I can't remember who had been raving about them, but we had been talking about them and then we saw her make them on her cooking show and we knew we had to try them out to take to Mimi & Gongi's annual Christmas morning breakfast the next day. It was definitely a labor intensive process, but they came out AWESOME and we will be making them again. We intended to take some with us for breakfast the next day and then deliver the others to friends and neighbors as gifts. Guess what? Only one set of neighbors got some as a gift. And why is that, you might ask? Because we ate them all.

GOOD STUFF! And totally low-fat and healthy, too. HA!

Next up. . .the 5:00 p.m. Christmas Eve service at our church. We actually set a plan to leave our house at 4:00 and get there in plenty of time to get a seat without stressing about it and we actually executed that plan this year with no problem! It was a Christmas miracle! There are two services on Christmas Eve and both are packed to the rafters with thousands of people so parking and finding 6+ seats is SO hard, but the early bird gets the worm and this is not a phrase I can use often in regards to my family!!

Can you believe this post is still going on and on? We're only at 6:00 p.m., folks. Next up - we headed to my in-law's town home for our annual red and green enchilada dinner and to open gifts. The kids all got matching pj's and they changed into those.

Ally

Mia

Maddie

Will

Posing in front of the tree with Jake

We set the timer to take a whole group photo

Mia was thrilled to get the crutches and cast for her American Girl doll. Along with the wheelchair that she got last year she should now be able to handle any emergency situation that might arise!

Will's most prized possession so far. . . a Happy Napper. We tried to point out to him that he doesn't even nap anymore PLUS he has to have all stuffed animals removed from his room each night because he thinks that them staring at him when he is trying to go to sleep is - AND I QUOTE - creepy and what if. . . . NO, SERIOUSLY - WHAT IF. . . .they all really come to life like in Toy Story? I think what really drew him to the Happy Napper (besides his obvious love for infomercials and commercials) was the theme song. Google it and see if you can get it out of your head. "Happy! Happy Nappers! And they love to play with you!"

Cathy brought a boy (man? guy?) home for the first time ever this Christmas. I will not make a big deal about it so that she is not embarrassed, but it has to be noted in the blog because it was a momentous occasion. This was the first time that we met him and OH THE CONVERSATIONS that we had to have with our kids before we met him face to face at Smashburger for dinner a few days before Christmas. They all had made him gifts. . .handmade gifts with lots of hearts and the word love everywhere. They wanted to know WHEN the wedding will be (just dating - not even engaged). Will he be their uncle (don't know yet)? Can they call him uncle (NO!) And we tried to get them to tone down the uncle/wedding talk so the poor guy didn't decide to fake an illness and leave early. Overall, he didn't seem too scared off by the craziness and he was really nice!

We headed home about 9:30 p.m. and the kids put out some reindeer food along with their SNICKERDOODLES and milk for Santa and everyone settled in for the night so we could wake up bright and early Christmas morning and start the chaos all over again.