Christmas Eve

Every Christmas Eve, we spend it with Jon's side of the family. This year the festive started at 11:00 am with a brunch at Thomas and Melanie's house. We had 2 different kinds of quiche, Sticky buns, Scrambled eggs, fruit salad, potatoes, OJ, and a variety of fancy hot chocolate. Everything was yummy. Then it was on to the presents. The kids opened gifts from the relatives and took off to play with their new gifts.

All the cousins minus Cory and Elizabeth

Hayden and Elizabeth fighting over the Doctors kit

Talmage with his new basketball and hoop to hang over his bed

As I mentioned in a previous post, I only made two gifts this year and they were for Thomas and Melanie and Ma and Pa Hansen. I made (with the help of Jon) tile board pictures of the temple they were sealed in. I got the idea from my sister Cheri who did this at one of there Super Saturdays last year.

close up of the Washington DC temple for the Hansen's

same picture just zoomed out a bit

Boise Temple close up sorry about the flash for Thomas and Melanie

I ordered the pictures from the church distribution center. The pictures I like best of these temples were in bigger sizes than I had originally wanted to do. I wanted to do a 11 x 14 but the temple pictures in that size just weren't cutting it for me. So I went with the bigger sizes and Jon made the frame. It was fun to do and took some time but I would love to do this again. The in laws loved them too and said they looked very professional.

We left around 3 pm because Thomas and Melanie still had to do a little more Christmas shopping before the stores closed.

Since we got done at that time, we joined my family minus the Edward's to Christmas Eve dinner. I brought one of my new favorite vegetable side dishes Squash casserole. The kids had fun playing and the adults had fun playing games. Payton wanted us to start a new tradition to get pjs on Christmas Eve. My mom used to do that with us girls and I just never did I think because we always spent Christmas Eve with the Hansen's so I felt they already got to open presents. So all the kids minus Connor and Hayden (he has a ton of pjs already) got new pjs to wear. It was kind of late when we all got to bed. Luckily everything was ready to be thrown under the tree. All that had to be done was the socks.

It's sad to think that next Christmas Eve will just be us and the Hansen's and no other cousins to hang out and play around with.