Christmas Eve

I'm way behind in blogging, but I'm trying to get caught up with some posts from Christmas!

This was our first year staying at home for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  We definitely missed being with our families, but we loved starting our own traditions at our own home.  Christmas Eve was on a Saturday and few days leading up to it Oliver had a horrible stomach virus.  After a middle of the night trip to the ER he was finally feeling better by Christmas Eve.  We spent the day hanging around the house, celebrating the birth of Jesus and spending time with eachother.  

Here are some pics of the boys decorating cookies for Santa!  

Oliver liked pouring the sprinkles!

 Elliott liked eating the frosting!!

Here's Oliver with more sprinkles!

We also made reindeer food with oatmeal and sprinkles.

Our church didn't have a Christmas Eve service, so we tried out another church.  It was very different than what we are used to, but we all enjoyed singing Christmas carols and the candle lighting at the end was neat.  They had a Children's Message that Elliott went up front for, he even spoke up and talked about how he helped his Daddy put up our Christmas lights on our house!  The kids all stood in a line holding a string of lights symbolizing how Jesus is the Light of the World.  This is where Elliott learned that they used to put candles on Christmas trees, but now we used Christmas lights.  After church we came home to unwrap a couple of presents.  My Mom always gave me new pajamas on Christmas Eve and we have continued  that tradition with the boys. 

Elliott received some glow-in-the-dark rocket pajamas!

Oliver was super excited about his Elmo Christmas PJs!

Greg gave me some super cute heart pajamas!  Love them!  Greg received some snowflake pajama pants, but we didn't get a picture.

We made this plate for Santa's cookies.  

The boys put Santa's cookies and hot chocolate right next to the fire place and they left a note for him.

Elliott didn't want to leave Santa too many cookies because he didn't want Santa to eat too many and get stuck in the fireplace!  

The boys sprinkled the reindeer food on the ground outside and we set out some carrots for them, too.

Here is our living room after Santa made his visit.  Santa set up two sets of Geo Trax, and he put a wrapped train set for each of the boys in special Santa Claus wrapping paper.