Christmas Eve

This year for Christmas we had a house full of family.  Grandpa and Grandma Denning arrived the weekend before Christmas, Uncle David arrived a few days before, and Kyle was here off and on when he wasn't working.  This is how much of our together time looked...(sitting together playing on electronics).

Christmas Eve morning we baked and decorated cookies for Santa (and a few for ourselves). 

There was some early taste testing going on...quality control we'll call it.

Matt had to work all day so once he got off that night we were ready to start partying.  We ordered pizza for dinner and there was a 4 hour time ban on all electronics. It was wonderful (a little difficult for some of us).  We have a family tradition that each of our family members come up with a Christmas themed game.  I really let the kids plan their own game this year so that I could be surprised and play along.  Sadi had her game planned weeks before and had been crafting prizes for everyone.  Her game was Christmas charades, and she was VERY particular about the rules and how it was played.  I think the most important role of her game was the "bag holder" job.   Here she is acting out a candy cane...

We all did pretty good acting out our words, and we all had a good laugh at one word that had me a bit worried when it looked like someone was acting out killing someone.  Sadi spelled the word sleigh:  "slay".  We all knew what she meant, but I think someone thought it would be funny to act out what she really spelled.  Grandma did a good job...can you tell what she is?

Chase came up with a game that was called find your mate.  We all lined up and faced each other then we were given a paper with a north pole animal on it.  We then had to act out our animal and be the first one to find our mate.

Kelsey's game was called what's in the stocking. We each had one minute to reach our hand inside a stocking and write down the 12 items that were in there.  Some of these were pretty tricky.

For my game I read a left/right version of the night before Christmas and we passed around a chocolate orange.  The person holding it at the end of the story got to keep the chocolate.

Uncle David had even planned a game for us which was lucky for Matt who didn't have a game ready (not sure why since this is a tradition we do EVERY year).  He had us draw a Santa on a paper plate on top of our head.  Harder than you think!

After games we watched a short movie, Prep and Landing that our elves brought us.  We love this movie, and it has been one we have watched Christmas eve for the past few years.  Our movie was just getting over when there was a knock at the door...it was Santa! 

We all got to sit on his lap, and he even brought a little something for the kids to "tide them over" he said.

He didn't stay long because he had a busy night ahead but told the kids they needed to get to bed soon.

The kids set out the cookies and milk for Santa. 

They had also received a letter from Santa that the elves delivered that morning that told them before they went to bed that he would lift their magic for  just a few minutes so that they could give them a hug and tell them goodbye.  So before they were off to bed they got to say goodbye to each of the elves.

 I even caught Sadi whispering a little secret to Jingle...

Not sure what it was she whispered, but I'm guessing it might have been a last minute wish.  Once we said our last goodbyes it was time to go to bed and hope that Santa found our house.