Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve is a busy time around here.

We started out at the Welling family party.

There was the opening of presents, food, reading the Nativity story, exchanging $5 gifts, and lots of visiting/playing. F0r the first time since I've been in the family we stayed for the entire thing. Brent had to leave part way through to go to work...so I was on my own from there on out.

After the Welling party we headed to Grandma Timperly's (Brent's Dad's mom-FYI). Her party is always an adventure, but it didn't seem so bad with the little kids getting big enough to participate. We had some more food, sang/acted-out songs (rudolph and 12 days to be exact), played some games, and opened presents.

By this time it was about 9:30 and we headed home. I had 3 tired little kids to get to bed on Christmas Eve. We bought them new pajamas but I forgot to wrap them...so I handed them to Bridger. He was so excited that he had a present and didn't even mind that they weren't wrapped! Corbin was asleep and woke up in the middle of me trying to put them on him...not a pleasant experience for either of us!

This is how the following 3 pictures went:

Hey, lets take a picture of you in your new jammies in front of the tree.

Ok, Mom. That sounds great.

Corbin? Would you like your picture taken?

No.

Quit taking pictures.
Can't you see I'm having the biggest melt down of the year?
And on that note Corbin went straight to bed. Reagan was already in bed before the picture taking began. Bridger was coaxed into bed with the ever popular "Santa can't come unless you're asleep...and if you don't go to bed right now he will have to skip our house so he can make it to all the houses on time"
Such a lovely, peaceful, Christmas eve!

Santa did come, and left some presents.
He even managed to snap a picture with our camera.

He even ate the cookies that Mom left out because there was so much drama before bed that the kids forgot to leave them. Bridger was so excited that Santa ate some cookies AND left a note for them.