Christmas Eve 2010

We invited the missionaries over for Christmas Eve again this year and we had a wonderful time with them. They truly brought a special spirit into our home.

We had a delicious ham dinner with sparkling cider, seasoned red potatoes, rolls, and jalapeno green beans. Personally, I am not a big ham eater, but I have to say after this dinner... I think I am! :) Everything about this dinner was AWESOME! Seth did an excellent job. (But let's give props where props are deserved... I pulled those Rhodes rolls out of the bag and let them thaw and rise before putting them in the oven for 15 minutes! ;)

After dinner was done we enjoyed listening to Christmas music (Mo Tab of course!) while Eli, Dallin and I made sugar cookies...

and the rest of the gang played board games. (Dominion and Battleship to name a few.) The missionaries LOVED Dominion.

After the games were done, the cookies were ready to decorate for Santa (and a few for our bellies too)!

**note Dallin DUMPING on the sprinkles, Connor LICKING his fingers, and Eli unsanitarily KNEELING on the table!**
We made sure Santa ONLY got cookies from our kids... and let the missionaries take home their OWN decorated cookies to Santa at their apartment! ;)

You know if you have sprinkles up the nose... you did a good job!

Then we all read the story of Christ's birth from the Bible and we watched the church's rendition of the Nativity.

Lastly, we each opened our one Christmas Eve gift. And what do you know... it was pajamas all around, AGAIN! :)

The missionaries were very appreciative and grateful the entire night.

The missionaries then left our home with a prayer around 9pm.

As a family, we watched a cartoon version of 'The Missing Wiseman'... or something of the sort? It was actaully pretty cute with an important message of the true meaning of Christmas.

From there we checked the Santa tracker and saw he was over Cuba! It was about 10pm so we set out our cookies and sprinkled our reindeer feed on the lawn, and all hurried to bed to make sure we were fast asleep for when Santa got to our house. (Cuz he skips over your house if you're awake!)

Santa was one lucky guy to score these puppies!!!

Merry Christmas!