Our Christmas "Eve Eve"

We are blessed to be able to spend Christmases with both of our families in Rockford each year, and because we are usually there for Christmas day, we have traditionally done our Christmas Eve on the 23rd and Christmas "morning" on the 24th.

Three Christmases ago we started the tradition of a nice Christmas Eve Eve dinner for our little family - candles, Christmas music, sparkling grape juice and...take out. I wish I could say that I MADE a wonderful meal for my family, but I don't. :-) Actually, I don't even wish that I could say that....I thoroughly enjoy picking up a wonderful meal that is all ready to go! :-) Our tradition has been to order from a middle eastern place in Oak Park called Grape Leaves. It's delish. Both Gabe and Caleb enjoyed the sparkling juice this year, and Gabe immediately lifted his glass and said, "Cheers!" and then we all proceeded to clink our glasses together (multiple times throughout the meal :-)).










I really enjoy this time every year. It just makes me stop whatever I'm doing in my hustle and bustle of getting ready for Christmas and just sit and enjoy the time with my husband and boys. I really get that "feeling" that I imagine when I think of the holidays, but that I rarely feel.



Then we do our traditional Christmas jammies. This year, we tried to prepare Gabe, because he was SUPER excited to be able to open a present, but I knew that when he saw jammies he'd be disappointed. So, we said something like, "Gabe, it's not a toy. It's a sleeping present." Strong hint toward PJs, right? Wrong. He opened them up and said, "oh, I was thinking it was gonna be a sleeping bag." Ha! But he was really sweet about the PJs and he and Caleb actually didn't complain at all about putting them on and posing by the tree for me. And I thought they were just too cute!









Dan and I exchanged PJs, too, and then we all got into them and read the Advent Book. This has also been a tradition of ours for the past few years. Dan actually worked with the folks who created and illustrated the book. Each day starting December 1, you open up one door that reveals a part of the Christmas story. This year Gabe memorized a good portion of it! The first line says, "And his name shall be call Immanuel, which means God with us." Caleb was trying his best, too, and everytime Dan would leave a blank for someone to fill in, Caleb would always say...no matter where we were in the book, "God wif yus." It was sweet and they both really love this book - we have to referee taking turns to open the doors.



And then it was time for bed, but not without a family photo of us all in our jammies. I'm still not great at setting up the camera with the timer - you can see the first shot didn't turn out very well!





I was going to include our Christmas morning in this post also, but I think I'll save that for another post...