Christmas Eve

Late Christmas Eve afternoon we headed to the family Christmas Eve concert and candlelight service at our church. I always look forward to this service every year. In my head I always have visions of sweet cuddles with my children, worship and prayer time and quiet moments focusing on the season's gifts. It never quite turns out just like it is in my head. I love it and I do get sweet cuddles, worship and prayer time and some focus, but there were also lots of loud whispers, a huge cup of hot chocolate spilled, Gracyn pointing things out with her middle finger, and the worries of three small children with fire! We managed through (barely) without catching any one's hair on fire. Despite the chaos, we love it and are thankful to have Christmas Eve service as part of our family tradition.

Another big tradition at our church here is to pass out donuts on Christmas Eve. The church provides thousands of boxes. They encourage you to take as many as you want and to go and bless someone with them. This year, each girl took a box and after dinner, we headed to the Children's Hospital near our house. We gave one box to the staff working that night and we passed several other boxes out to families in the waiting room. We pray they were a blessing to people who weren't home on Christmas Eve night. This is one of our favorite Christmas traditions in Cincinnati and something I think we will always continue, even if we move away from here.

We got home with an excited group of girls, ready to make preparations for Santa. They braved the cold to scatter reindeer food around the yard.



Trixie the Elf had used a bag of M&M's to write a Christmas countdown several days before. Trixie started at 2 Days, and the girls changed it for the few days after that. 

So excited!

Addison and Reagan worked really hard on letters for Trixie and Santa.

Gracyn skipped the letter writing and just ran around, super excited.

Do you think she is ready for Santa?

Reagan and Daddy having a little worship time.

The girls got everything ready for Santa and then we read the Christmas story in the bible and tucked them all in for a slumber party in Addison's room. The anticipation of the morning to come kept them up for quite a while, but they eventually gave up and fell asleep.