Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve started with the discovery that Mark and I had both bought him the same cubs shirt. Which naturally means that now I have one too....

Twinners!

 After an unfortunate trip to Walmart that lasted two hours too long because I unwisely arranged for grocery pick up on Chrismas Eve.... (Also... Everly, Megan and Mathew hadn't bought their Christmas gifts.  Whoops!)

We finally took some time to make our braided bread. This time with salt. Anna is learning Ethan's tossing technique. If anyone can beat the gluten into submission, it's Anna.

While the bread was rising, we set out to make some gingerbread men. They were so cute...and the cookie dough was pretty delicious.

Everly remembered that it was her turn to put up the Santa for Christmas Eve. We've been strangely inconsistent with remembering the calendar this year, so it's a good thing she has such a fantastic memory.

Yay for tall big brothers!

Our bread turned out beautifully! And we followed Mom's advice to make smaller loaves and get a few more out of the batch. Why didn't that ever occur to me?

We packed up our loaves, dropped off a couple on the way to dinner and then headed out. We thought we'd try to go to Sho-gun, but couldn't get a table, so we went over to Cheddars and we were glad we did!  The food was delicious and we had a nice time. The table we were given reminded us of our own dinner table and everyone naturally sat in their regular spots.

Everly learned how to use her thumb to trap water in her straw...

The littles played with putty on one side...

And the bigs quoted movies and spoke in their outside voiced on the other side.

It was fun! And I had no dishes to do and those onion rings were....the best!

We dropped off the remaining loaves of bread and then headed over to the Christmas Place neighborhood for our annual Minivan Express, albeit without tickets or cups of cocoa. With full bellies, the kids overlooked the omission.

Soon we were home and opening our Christmas Eve jammies.  Much silliness ensued.

Mark and I had one of the kids take a photo of us.....and we laughed when we saw it because we look EXHAUSTED.

So we sat up, perked up and tried it again.....not so bad!

The kids were sent to bed and made a last ditch effort to entice Santa with our pan full of unfrosted gingerbread men.... what can I say?  I guess these required one too many steps for today.

 I thought the ice packs around the milk were nice touch....warm milk is getsgusting.

I finished up working on Laney's infernal flamenco skirt and Mark brought down gifts for the tree.

I love seeing it all full and bustin and lit up!

And we were in bed by 10....if only it hadn't felt like midnight...