Christmas Eve

For the size of my family, this year's Christmas Eve celebration was a bit meager with just my family and my brother Phillip's family along with my mom and dad. My other four siblings were either celebrating on their own or with their spouse's family. Although we missed everyone, a small group has its benefits. There's not nearly as many dishes to do and not nearly as many screaming, wild, overly-excited children to cause total anarchy.

We enjoy staying home for Christmas, and since my parents live just up the street, we usually find ourselves at their home each year to share Christmas Eve dinner. Our family's tradition has always been to have a big dinner on Christmas Eve with ham and in the past several years, a prime rib along with what we call special potatoes (better known as funeral potatoes), homemade rolls, salad, and other side dishes - anyone attending dinner contributes in one way or another. This year I made the potatoes, rolls, and a red jello (always a request of my parents). My mom set up a lovely table in her dining room for our feast. It's a big deal when the kids get to eat in the dining too, because most of the time, the "adult" table is in the dining room and the "kid" table is in the kitchen. Probably not a big surprise to anyone.

Continuing with our tradition, following dinner, we always read the story of Christ's birth in Luke 2 of the New Testament, and whatever kids are present, play all the parts. This year, our high school freshman, Sophie and Madi were our narrators.

Because so many of the kids are getting older, and consider themselves much too grown up to dress up anymore, we were very short on actors and actresses for this year - with a grand total of 4. Lacey and Kara played dual roles - first as animals and later as an angel and shepherd. The last couple of years, these 2 have always played Mary and Joseph, so it was a great opportunity for them to branch out :)

Ben was old enough to play Joseph this year - so this was the first year that we have actually had a boy portray Joseph.

Annalise was Mary - aren't they the cutest??

Our final Christmas Eve family tradition, which I think is a tradition shared by just about everyone I ever meet, is to open up new PJs on Christmas Eve. This year I opted to buy just the bottoms because that's all the girls end up ever wearing anyway - plus it saved me money!

Ben, however, always loves a good pair of flannel, "grandpa" style pj's, so he got matching tops and bottoms. He also got some Spiderman sunglasses, so he thought he was very cool, as exhibited by his pose here in front of the Christmas tree!