Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve day was spent with dad and Ben sneakily building a playhouse in the garage, while mom and I remembered things we forgot to buy for dinner. We had a delicious ham dinner and then made gingerbread houses Paige had patiently been waiting to do. Deacon demanded to wear the ladybug helmet almost the entire day...

 This picture sums up their approaches... Paige was very deliberate with her frosting and decorating and really took her time, while Deacon just tried to eat everything.

Next we moved onto our "program'. It was hard deciding what to include in the program this year, with less people and all. We started with a song and then performances by Paige and Deacon. When I was little I would see Deck the Halls, but with the words "gobie gobie"(my family still teases me), so I thought it would be fun to teach Paige the song. She took learning it very seriously and her version was to too funny to correct.
   "Deck the halls a thousand holy, falalalala"
   "Don we now our gangs apparel, falalalala"
While she would stand on the hearth and belt her heart out, Deacon stood next to her serving as her little backup dancer, bobbing to the music. She also sang a very loud version of jingle bells, sung in a round that never ends. Probably the most hilarious thing about all of it was how much she reminds me of me at that age. Holding a random book for her "songs", taking it so seriously, bowing at the end,   mispronouncing words....she is a mini me and I love it.

   Since my dad had called my sister to show her Paige singing, while we had her on facetime we decided to sing the 12 Days of Christmas with her family. It was kind of weird this Christmas not having any of our siblings there, so I'm really glad we did part of our program with Becca's family. And Paige was a fabulous Partridge in a Pear Tree.

Next Ben told the "shimmy" story (his family's tradition and always a tear jerker), watched the nativity video, let the kids open their sibling gifts (our first time having them "pick out" gifts for each other), read the Night Before Christmas, and then put out the cookies for Santa. Paige also had made "reindeer food" at preschool, so we sprinkled that in the grass.

Finally, we took a picture in our awesome elf pajamas (yes they had them in Ben's size but he was too cool for them). Then after telling Paige over and over that she had to stay in her bed until we came upstairs in the morning, we put the kids down, watched A Christmas Story, and went to bed like excited little kids.