Christmas Eve has always bee set aside for just me, Matt, and the kids. A day with no extended family and time to just be together. Matt always asks for work off, so he usually ends up having to work Christmas day every year, so this is our biggest day of the whole season. Here's our traditional dinner--and the only time we eat anything on fancy plates: prime rib, potatoes and gravy, bbq bacon water chestnuts, green beans and almonds in cream, and mormon wine: grapejuice and sprite. Early in the day the kids always help me put the table together. We have a book of 50 different napkin folds and the kids pick a new one and we have oragami napkin time and put the cool napkins on the plate. This year they were Christmas trees.
After dinner we read the Christmas story, acting it out with our little people's set. Then everyone gets a father's blessing for the year.
Then we make a pit in the basement, fill it with styrofoam peanuts, hide the sibling presents in it and jump and swim around for an hour. Don't ask how this traditional got started.
This year we started a new tradition. On my first date with Matt, we made a hot air balloon and when we launched it, it got stuck under the bleachers of the cougar stadium, tipped to the side, and became a fiery ball of doom that spelled my expulsion from BYU. Fortunately, cement doesn't catch on fire and we weren't caught. We make hot air balloons from time to time. This year in a cheesy attempt to put more of Christ back into our Christmas, we told the kids to think of a present (something they'd like to work on this year) to give to Jesus. We wrote them down, made a balloon, taped the gifts on, and sent them up to heaven as our balloon narrowly missed the neighbors roof and sailed away into the sky. They fly much better when the weather is cold.
Christmas morning we got ready for church with time to spare. So I asked Matt to whip out the tripod. We sort of skipped taking a family picture this year, so this our attempt to squeeze it in before the end of the year. I had to mash three different pics to make one where everybody was looking at the camera and sort of smiling.
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year!
2 comments:
What fun traditions. I love the sibling gifts in the box idea. My kids would love that. So happy you guys had a fun Christmas!
The dinner sounds delicious! I'm interested in your recipes for water chestnuts and the almonds in cream (please). I've always thought your Styrofoam peanuts tradition was a lot of fun but have never been brave enough.
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