Christmas Eve is traditionally spent with my family. My mother is German and that is when they always celebrated Christmas. The night includes focusing on the Savior and spending time with family. We always have a ham and rolls and various goodies to snack on. We sing Christmas carols and listen to the Bible story of the birth of Christ and then we open presents from one another. We do a gift exchange with the brothers and sisters and their children, to avoid having to get a lot of gifts, but we usually end up giving gifts to others anyway. The night is always full of entertainment and excitment as I have nine brothers and sisters. That, combined with their spouses and all our children makes for an interesting night. Our family is so big, we're discussing moving Christmas Eve out of my parents 5,500 sq. ft. house next year. I baked all day long for the event making a pumkin pie (thanks to Carrie for the great recipe), a peach cobler (thanks to Heather for the great recipe), and a coconut pie. The pumpkin pie was the most beautfiul pie I had ever made and the sad thing was, Eric dropped it on the ground on the way into the house! I was so upset I could have cried but when I looked at Eric and the sad expression on his face when he apologized, I couldn't help but smile. Nobody really wanted to eat it after that - even though most of it hadn't actually fallen out of the pan, it looked pretty crappy.
Christmas day is spent at our individual homes in the morning and then we usually try to visit with Eric's family. I love being able to have our own traditions for Christmas morning. This year, I snuck down early after Alex woke up and made German pancakes for Eric. I think I will have to keep this as an annual tradition. After we ate breakfast, we had such a fun time opening Alex's gifts with him. We didn't get him much this year since he's so little, but he liked chewing on the paper the best anyway. Then we went ahead and opened our presents to each other. Once again, we didn't get each other much, but I love seeing what Eric decided to get me and how much he likes what I got him. Out of all my presents, I think my favorites were the traditional German tannenbaum candles my sister got us for our tree, the really nice hair straightener I got from Eric (my hair is the bane of my existence), and the metal measuring spoons that belonged to Eric's Grandma McFarland that I got from his Dad. The measuring spoons are so sentimental, I couldn't bare to use them so I decided to tie a string on them and hung them from the tree as an ornament. Thank you so much to everyone else for being so generous - we love you all very much.
I can't wait to start Christmas traditions with Alex, but he was a little too small for most of them this year. I did make sure that he got pj's and a Christmas book on Christmas Eve and that he had his own little Christmas tree with toy ornaments and his "Baby's first Christmas" ornament. In the future, I want to do some sort of advent calendar each day leading up to Christmas, bake and decorate Christmas cookies with him, maybe even surprise Daddy with the Twelve Days of Christmas, and make a homemade gift for someone. What Christmas traditions do you have in your family?
I took so many pictures this last month, instead of trying to post them all, I just made them into a movie.
Have a very Merry Christmas and fabulous New Year!
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