Christmas Eve is the party day of the Christmas week. Am I right? We fill it with activities, traditions, and food and over the years and years of building these traditions with our family it is a well-oiled machine. Good thing we take Christmas Day off to just RELAX! :)
As always, we start out by bowling on Christmas Eve. This was our 11th year of Christmas Eve bowling!
For all 3 of our Christmas Eves in Vegas we have bowled at the same local casino. The bowling alley has 64 lanes and it's a great facility.
My parents joined us for Christmas this year. Aren't they cute?
Payton is always good for hamming it up for the camera.
And I love getting this yearly bowling ball shot. I wonder how many more years I'll get to do this?!
We gathered several families from our ward to join us for bowling. I think there were 30 people in all - what a great group! We are so happy that they want to come. It's always so fun to see and mingle with friends on the eve of such a special day. There is just this special magic and buzz in the air.
Afterwards we made our way to Freddy's for steakburgers and frozen custard. Mmmm.
Back home we spent some time prepping dinner, the kids played Mario Kart 8, and I tried to grab a few photos around the house.
This year I ordered some photo ornaments with our traditional Christmas Eve pajama photos of the kids. I love them! Each ornament is 2 sided, the photos are printed on metal, and I ordered them from Tiny Prints.
We frosted sugar cookies. I make the cookies the day before, store them up tight, and then we frost them on Christmas Eve. Doing it all on Christmas Eve is way too much work!
We sat down to a delicious dinner of pork tenderloin, funeral potatoes, carrots, raspberry Jell-O crunch, and Martinelli's. And we opened up our Christmas Crackers. These are always SO MUCH FUN! I love the paper crowns and the jokes & trivia inside always provide a lot of dinner table conversation. The set of Crackers I purchased this year were even better because each included a numbered horn/whistle, a conductor's wand, and a few sheets of music. It was quite comical trying to lead our make-shift band and I don't think we played anything that sounded vaguely familiar or even musical. But it was fun!
Then it was time for . . . . pajamas!
Okay, I think that these pajamas are TOTALLY cute. But, they were a wee bit slim on the boys. They had fun with it though. Payton instantly busted out stretching moves as if he were in an old-time workout video.
We read Christmas stories - Twas the Night Before Christmas and Santa Mouse. Then we read from the fabulous Christ-centered Christmas advent book that a friend gave us. Then we watched Small One and Mr. Krueger's Christmas . . . . whew!
THEN, it was time to set out our stockings, cookies for Santa, cheese for Santa Mouse, oats + glitter on the lawn to attract the reindeer, and shoo the kids off to bed.
Good night!