Christmas Eve

I know we will all be reading a lot of Christmas posts and wow! What an exciting year! I'll have to do mine in shifts because we were so busy and so blessed.

This is our first family Christmas at home so we were wide open to traditions and new things to do. Overall we had a great day. Who can't love Christmas when there is over a foot of snow on the ground! We started the festivities off with the boys favorite breakfast-burritos, proudly called ritos in our house. Then we made 24 Candy Cane Rudolph's in preparation for a Progressive dinner we went to that night (more on that later). And of course we headed outside for some fun in the snow. The boys and I have been out almost daily but Chris usually misses out on the fun, and everythings always more fun with a dad that can build big slides so we had a blast. After 2 hours going up and down hills we all took a nap and got ready for the evening out.

Kayden is smashed in teh middle, and yes they went down the hill like this.

Before we headed out for the night we made sure and put cookies and milk out for Santa, right next to the fireplace. Kayden is pretty worried that we don't have an actualy chimney as he's spent a significant amount of time walking around the outside of our house trying to find one. I cheated and told him one of the vents was a chimney. And of course Trace perfectly lined up 8 carrots in a row for the reindeer.

We are so very blessed to have an adoptive family in Orem that invited us to their annual family Christmas Eve progressive dinner. We started out with 3 amazing appetizers at Amy & Aaron Schauers home, where the boys sang this for everyone afterwards. Next we headed to Heather and Justin Schauers home for incredible, incredible soup followed by a wonderful program by their cute kiddos. Next we headed to Justin & Shauna Schauers for wonderful salad, and of course more entertainment. Next another siblings home for main course of ham and rolls and potatoes and still another home for dessert!! Lucky me I had stretchy pants on so I was good but man, 4 hours of eating amazing food is my kind of night!

As we were driving from house to house we were looking out the windows to see if we could find Santa's sleigh. Kayden so matter of factly informed us that he has a new engine on his sleigh this year, with 150 reindeer power so it flies so fast and so high we can't see it! He is so funny! We finally hit our pillows about midnight!