Christmas Eve

We had a great Christmas Eve. Unfortunately Jamie had to work until 3pm that day. We were able to have lunch with my Uncle Richard and his family. We had a delicious turkey and dressing meal with lots of sides and desserts. It was very nice to enjoy a good meal and visit with family.
After lunch, we hung out with my parents until Jamie got home from work. When he got home, we went and delivered some last minute Christmas treats to a couple of families and looked at a few more Christmas lights. We then came home and had a little supper--Nutella sandwiches. Yum Yum!

While we were eating our supper, we baked our cookies for Santa.
After the children finished eating, they went outside to put out the reindeer food.

It was then time to come back in and open our Christmas pajamas. Everyone was happy about their new pjs and were then very excited to go and take a bath and put them on.

After they were all done in the bath, we took our annual pajama picture in front of the tree. We then sat and read "The Night Before Christmas" and then Jamie read the Christmas story from the Bible. It was very nice to end our night with the story of our Savior's birth. It was fun throughout the month talking about our Savior and having them tell me the story back. They remembered so many of the details. I hope that I helped them understand that Christmas was not about what was under the tree or what Santa brought, but that it was about our Savior's birth.

Laura Lynn went to bed before everyone else, so she didn't get in the picture of the cookies and milk for Santa. At 9:00, everyone was in their room going to bed. Of course, we heard Santa's jingle bells outside the window a few minutes after they were in their beds. I had to make sure they knew that he was in the neighborhood. They very quickly fell asleep because they didn't want him to pass up our house if they were still awake.

It was so nice to be able to put out their stuff and we were actually in bed by 11:30pm.
Of course, at midnight, the baby woke us up crying. Jamie went to get her since I was so warm in bed. He brought her in a minute later and she was covered in vomit. She had thrown up all over her crib and herself. So, the fun began.
I gave her a shower and cleaned her up. She threw up one more time before falling back to sleep next to me. I had her on a towel next to me in the bed just in case she got sick again. At 2am, Eli and Katie came in wanting to know if they could see what Santa brought them. I told them to go back to bed and not get up again until it was light outside.
At 3am, Katie was back but this time she said her tummy hurt. I told her to go to the bathroom and she did. I heard her in there and sent Jamie to check on her since I had the baby in my arms. He came back and said she had thrown up in the toilet but had gone back to bed. Fortunately, there were no more interruptions the remainder of the night.