Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve day started out with a surprise letter from our Elves Jack and Jingle.  They had written us a goodbye letter that was just the sweetest.  At the end of the letter it said that Santa was to lift their magic for just a few minutes so that we could hug them and kiss them goodbye!  As you know you are not allowed to touch the elves because they will loose their magic so the kids were thrilled!

Kelsey snatched up our newest Elf Jack and cuddled with him.

Chase couldn't give enough hugs and was really interested to hold them.  He was sure he could feel their little elf bones and thus decided they were for sure real!

Sadi was the sweetest giving them hugs and telling them goodbye...making sure to look them in the eyes.  So Sweet!

As we were taking pictures together with them Sadi told them she wished there was another one so that they all had one to hold...I really hope they don't go back to the North Pole and tell Santa this! 

The day seemed to drag on forever!  I don't know about you but for me Christmas Eve day seems like the longest day of the year.  We baked cookies for Santa and when Daddy got home from work that night it was finally time to party!  We ate until we were stuffed.  Our family tradition has always been playing Christmas games.  Each person has to come up with a Christmas game to play.  Sadi chose Christmas Charades (they play this in dance class).  It's pretty entertaining to watch the kids act out different things.  Here she is acting out Santa (she literally stood still like this until we guessed who she was).

Chase's game was "Don't eat Rudolph" (same as Don't eat Pete!) but he made a Christmas version. 

I'm not sure what Kelsey called this game but it was hard!  We each had a long string in our mouth with a pom pom on the end of it and Vaseline on our noses.  The idea was to swing the string until you got the pom pom to stick to your nose.  I think Sadi won.  While we were all swinging our heads around she ate her string in her mouth until it reached her nose.

I chose an easy game we had played before....I should remember this game usually makes someone cry.  Everyone gets to pick 3 favorite candies but you have to give them up as the dice tells you too (passing to the left/right).  When only one person remains, they win all the candy.  The happy winner....(losers not photographed due to tears...they all got a prize though).

I think Daddy picks the same game almost every year...Canes (a.k.a. spoons).  And just like every year he swooped in an won.

As we were ending our games all of the sudden we had an unannounced visitor!  It was Santa!!  He looked oddly familiar :)  I told him he looked shorter than I remembered him being to which he had one witty answer for.  He said the elves were playing around with the shrink ray and shrunk him!

 We all got a chance to sit on his lap and tell him what we wanted for Christmas.

 He even surprised us and had a sack full of surprise presents. 

 He brought Kelsey a nice new art kit.  She was very excited.

After Santa's visit we watched a movie, hung our stockings by the t.v. (Sadi was concerned when Daddy couldn't find our chimney), and got ready for bed. 

It was a long night full of anticipation of the big guy's arrival.