Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve is when most of our current traditions take place, which I love because it makes you feel the Christmas spirit.   We spent the day prepping some things for dinner, tracking Santa online, listening to Christmas music, and just relaxing in between.  For dinner, we had a Thanksgiving-type meal with turkey and all of the fixings.  After dinner, we did the nativity reenactment with the kids, which was a little crazy getting so many little kids to follow orders, but it was still super cute and touching.  Next, we had a family talent show where people sang, played instruments, and even juggled!  Then we lit candles and sang Christmas carols and hymns in just the candle/Christmas lights.  Marc made candles out of hallowed-out oranges and olive oil.  It looked so festive and smelled like oranges.  Finally, all of the kids opened up their new pajamas and wrote letters and left cookies out for Santa.  Of course they couldn't stay up very late just in case Santa was close, so off to bed the kiddos went.  The adults set everything up for the next morning and then we stayed up way too late just talking and laughing.  It was such a great day.

This picture was actually from the day before Christmas Eve, but I needed somewhere to put it.  The three little girlies in their Christmas dresses.  This was taken after church and they were all tired and hungry, so we're lucky we even got this.  These girls are going to have so much fun in the future together, I just know it!  In fact, Lucy is lucky to have a lot of awesome cousins around her age.. even Amyah and Ashlynn and Elizabeth won't seem that much apart in a few years.

There was only so much room when we all sat down at the tables for dinner, so the baby girls got to eat on the floor.  We had a lot of sweeping and vacuuming to do after those meals!

Nativity time.  Lucy was an Angel, so Ryan appropriately held her up for her part. :)

All of the stuffed animals were out for talent show props and the Rasmussen's have the same big bear that we do.  As soon as Lucy saw it, she went over to it to give it hugs and kisses.

Ryan and Craig juggled for their talent.  They started out with shoes...

Then moved to stuffed animals...

Including Big Bear!  Haha.  We all had a good laugh over this picture afterwards.  He really did juggle it, too!

Christmas songs and orange candles.

Christmas jammies.

The stockings were hung and Santa came!