Christmas Eve

I know I've said it in past posts, but Christmas Eve really is one of my favorite days of the year.  My favorite way to spend it is right at home doing traditions and listening to Christmas music.

We teamed up and decorated our gingerbread houses (one of my favorite traditions).  This year I saw a tip on TV to hot glue your house together and to the plate before decorating.  This was GENIUS for little kids.  No broken roofs, the candy wasn't too heavy...never going back.

I let Joey pick out the decorating candy at the store.  We had lots of fun things to use...and eat....

Joey's house & Charlie's house

Charlie and I had our second year of making homemade caramels.  We let them cook a couple degrees too hot so they weren't as chewy as I hoped.  But hey, it's a tradition now so there's always next year, right?!

The boys and I made our red and green M&M cookies for Santa.

Joey kept dropping presents because he would not put his gun down

After the baking was done it was time to pull out the presents.  I don't think we've ever put presents under our tree before Christmas.  We always try but with little kids it's hard to explain that the presents sit there until Christmas morning.  We hid all of the presents in the baby's room and the boys were so excited to see how many things were wrapped and hidden.  Everyone helped bring the presents downstairs & under the tree.

Immediately after we did our tradition of opening a Christmas Eve present--new pajamas & a new movie for our movie/dinner party!

This year the boys opened the movie Planes and Planes themed pajamas!

The boys were SO EXCITED about the movie and pajamas.  It made the whole night magical.  Our family tradition is to have lots of appetizers for dinner.  We eat in the family room and watch whatever movie our special Christmas Eve movie is.

Joey was so excited about eating in the family room.  He kept refilling our cheetos (the most important part of the meal, of course) and checking to make sure everyone had what they needed.

Planes was a hit!

After the movie it was time to sample Santa's cookies, set them out with milk and sprinkle the "reindeer food" in the front lawn.  Charlie brought home reindeer food (oats & glitter) from preschool and couldn't wait to put it out.  It helps attract the reindeer, of course.

We read "Twas the Night Before Christmas" then it was time for bed!  The boys were asleep by 7:30pm.  Santa can't come unless you're sleeping and the boys went right to bed!

setting out Santa's cookies

Really, Christmas Eve is the best day of the year.