Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve this year was a quiet evening at our house. Well - as quiet as you can get with a 3 year old and 5 year old the night before Christmas. We had what is becoming our tradition of a little seafood buffet that night complete with grilled oysters, clam chowder, and baked crab dip. Rich and Jolene joined us for the evening and we all enjoyed the company and the anticipation of what the next day would bring.

Sadly, my piano doesn't get near as much use as I would like. But we did enjoy it more this year around the holidays than we ever have before. The boys enjoyed pretending that they could play the piano. They can't, but they did learn the lyrics (not the tune mind you, just the lyrics) to an impressive number of Christmas songs this year. We were serenaded quite frequently throughout the evening.

My Mom's neighbors of almost 40 years gave us a cute gift complete with everything we would need to bake cookies for Santa and his reindeer. We went ahead and put that gift to use and this is what we came up with! Luke was my big cookie helper. I have to admit that I think we did a fabulous job this year with our cookies for Santa. We've come a long way in a year....
December 2011:

December 2010:

Of course we had to track Santa using the NORAD app on Steve's iPAD.

We let the boys each open one gift on Christmas Eve before heading to bed. This year they got to open their gifts to each other. Both boys were very appreciative of the gifts and did a great job of thanking each other even without prompting!