Christmas Eve At Our House

This year was my year to have the girls for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning and it worked out so well. I ended up not being booked to work Christmas Eve and so the girls and I had the whole day together. We all got dressed up and went to the regular Sunday morning church service. Amber wore the dress she picked out to got o the Nutcracker Ballet and Emily wore a red velvet dress. The red velvet dress was the one I wore the year that I was 5 on Christmas. It is still in amazing condition and looked so beautiful on her. In the afternoon we baked cookies for Santa and hung around the house just relaxing as a family. It feels like it has been forever since I have had a chance to do that with the girls. I made a beautiful dinner for the girls, my mom and I. It has always been a tradition in my family that we have ham and scalloped potatoes on Christmas Eve. Another tradition has always been to open 1 gift on Christmas Eve. That gift has always been new Christmas PJ's. The girls also opened a gift from friends of ours from New Jersey. They were given beautiful musical dolls. The girls changed into their pj's and we went to the Christmas Eve service at our church. It was beautiful!! There is so much talent in our church. I am so blessed to be part of a church that can worship so freely and openly. When I worship there I can feel the presence of the Holy Spirit and I am so blessed. After the service we went over to Sue & Fred's for a little while. The girls had a blast hanging out with their teen girls. We then went home and put out milk & cookies for Santa, letters that Amber had written to Santa, Rudolph and the Elves, and a bag of money Emily had found around the house so that Santa could get himself a present. Out on the porch we left a bag of reindeer food that Emily had made at school and carrots for the reindeer. Then the kids went off to bed. It was an amazing day. One I am so very thankful for.