Christmas Eve

 Christmas Eve is full of our favorite Christmas traditions! And this year we were lucky to have Grammy Q here to celebrate with us. 

The Jesus dinner, officially our favorite Christmas tradition and top three favorite meals of the year- 

The nativity, with an extra sweet Mary and Joseph- 

The reindeer food toss (Laney enjoyed eating those oats for the week following Christmas)-

So many moments in front of the Christmas tree- 

And finally! The siblings gift exchange!

Everyone's favorite gift swap. 

Honestly, there wasn't much talk about Santa in our December this year, but Noah and Emma were sure to get everything ready for him before they went to bed. The gathered the cookies and milk and wrote Santa a letter.  Just two days earlier they all wrote letters to Santa with no real idea whether they would get to the North Pole in time for Santa to read them. Amazingly, he must have received them because, while he didn't honor all of their Christmas gift wishes, he did comment on and respond to the more personal requests they must have made in their letters.  Magic indeed.

Laney was more than happy to keep an eye on those cookies. 

I even got to snap a picture of Christmas morning long before anyone else was up.  Christmas was on a Sunday this year and the kids voted to open only their stockings before church, leaving everything else until they could get back home and into their jammies again.