Our Eve.

Yes.  Today is New Years.  And the recent Eve we celebrated was just last night.

Guess what I did on that big holiday?

I slept.

I feel asleep on the couch while the kids watched Scooby Doo movies and played the game of life.

I was so asleep that I slept right through the new year and my cute husband woke me up at 1:00am.

I’m an awesome wife and mom I tell you.

To my credit, I did have an epidural in my neck earlier in the day.

…and I think the Christmas hoop-la must have wore me right out.

I did however stay awake for Christmas Eve which is always a favorite of mine.

It was a wonderful night.

The kids went skiing in the morning.

Then we took a few moments to decorate cookies for Santa.

The kids spent some time wrapping their presents for each other, and then we got the house all ready for a Christmas Eve party.

Jonathan has 2 sisters that live in Logan.  It is always nice to share an evening with family and cousins.

We shared a nice meal of ham, cheesy potatoes, and all the yummy sides.

We also had a fun little photo booth to commemorate the night.

This is Jonathan’s oldest sister JoDean and her family.

…and this is Jonathan’s youngest sister Lorinda and her family.

Jonathan has four sisters, and no brothers.  It is nice to have a couple close by.

…and this is our family; if you didn’t know.

Once our guests left for the night we enjoyed a few of our family traditions.

The kids opened gifts from one another. The boys desperately wanted a pair of these Nike Elite socks.

They opened their non-traditional pajamas.  We decided to buy the kids nice warm comfy outfits that they could wear on those lazy days instead of just Christmas jammies.

Another Christmas Eve tradition is to give the kids an ornament.  We do this so that when they move away, they can have an ornament collection for their own tree.

We try to buy something that represents something that has taken place during the year.

This year I picked a glittery star to remind the children of our family theme.

I started our theme this year at the beginning of the school year.  I plan to have it go until next school year where I will introduce a new theme.

Our theme this year was:

You can read more about that here.

We ended the evening reading a few Christmas stories. 

This has been an ongoing monthly tradition.  We have read Christmas stories almost every night.

It was then time to set out the cookies and leave some carrots outside for the reindeer.

We even have a special magical key that Isaac left at the front door so Santa could get in; just in case it wouldn’t work to come down the chimney.

My favorite part of the evening is seeing the beautifully wrapped gifts all set out for the night.  It’s one of the most magical parts.