Christmas Eve 2015

How has Christmas Eve come and gone?  Can't believe it!  Hope all of you had a lovely Christmas Eve.  We had a nice Christmas Eve, and Eve of Christmas Eve which we've dubbed Christmas Adam. First off, on Christmas "Adam", our new couch arrived!

Looks, lovely right?  Ha.  This is our old one.  The leather started peeling off AND a certain child put a nice rip in the back, we moved us to action to buy another couch. Thankfully someone came and got our couch.  We gave it away for free on Craigslist.  Thank you college student! 


The room fairly empty!  The kids loved the open space for a few minutes.




Our couch came with a white glove delivery service.  A guy delivered the couch, set it up, and took away all the associated garbage.  It was really nice!


And, boom, here it is!  Like magic!  It's positioned differently right now.  But it's a really nice couch and all seven of us can sit on it with room to spare! I hope we don't regret buying a nice couch while our kids are still somewhat young.  I do figure that now (and yesterday) is the time to learn to treat furniture properly.


The same day the guy came to deliver the couch was our scheduled baking/candy making day.  It went well! Except for the fact that the bottom oven decided to quit on me!  So glad we had the small top oven.  I am writing this post in January of 2016 and Lee already ordered a new heating element and installed it.  It's up and running after being out of commission for a few weeks. YAY!


We have pumpkin pie and egg nog for breakfast Christmas morning.


Of course we needed bigger pies too!


Lois got me hooked on these cranberry pies.  LOVE them.  They are a Christmas staple now!


And since there was a lot of pie dough, meat pie was in order for dinner that night. I did a "rustic" crust, ha ha.  Okay, so really I was just being lazy...


The kids helped me with coconut center candy.  YUM.






And I made homemade caramel.  This time I cut it up into little pieces and wrapped it for fun eating.




Another project before Christmas Eve, which I am sooooo glad I did and NOT on Christmas Eve, was to add sleeves to Shanna's new doll.  We are pretty particular about our kids having sleeves on their clothes, so I didn't want the doll to be an exception.  Maybe weird for some people, but worth the effort for me.


There was a lot of unpicking and trial and error.  Again, so glad I didn't attempt this Christmas Eve!




Christmas Eve came!  It was incredibly warm outside--about 70.  I loved it! Every Christmas Eve we visit neighbors and bring them a card and goodies.  It's nice to say hello.  Sadly, Haley woke up with strep that morning and felt pretty crummy.  Later we dropped off the younger kids at our friend's house so Clark, Cal, Lee and I could watch Star Wars.  We met up with friends and it was super fun!  And a huge thank you to our friends who agreed to watch Haley anyway.  As far as I know, no one else caught the strep....not even us.  Such a blessing. That day we also called and wished my dad a big happy birthday, acted out the Nativity (and there was more acting out than should have happened...) read 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, and got the kids in bed.  We were going to go out to eat that night but that was canceled because of the sickness.  Pizza was in order since I hadn't planned on cooking at all.


Lee and I had fun setting up for Christmas. We hadn't wrapped any of the presents yet, and I don't think that was a great idea.  Oh, well.  Now we know.






Lee is very kind and humors me with letting me do all of my family traditions.  One of which is to put up a sheet covering the doorway to the family room where the presents are! 


All ready and patiently waiting for all the kids and squeals!




You might see a cereal box peeking out of my stocking.  That is a tradition of Lee's--to get an individual box of cereal.  And the stocking idea came from Lee's grandma, on his dad's side. We've kept that too.  I've even made similar stockings for my parents and my sister's family.










I wish I could say I went to bed at 10:00pm, or even 11:00.  But I went to bed MUCH later.  I had a fun time chatting with one of my sister's though.  Love Christmas! Stay tuned!!!!