Merry CHRISTmas Eve!

Christmas Eve began with the opening of our family presents. I received one of the best gifts ever -a new video camera!!! Woohoo! That's how I spent most of my Christmas holiday... with a video camera in front of my face!

Christmas Eve also saw our minute-by-minute tracking of Santa on NORAD. Such a fun, interesting and magical website, so much that it... makes... you... believe. We checked in on Santa's progress around the world up until the very minute Kayla closed her eyes to go to sleep - Santa was in England and had already delivered over 4 billion presents.

Koh-kee! Our budding gymnast in her new gymnastics outfit and her new baby doll.

Khloe with her two new favorite gifts - plaster molds to paint and her gymnastics outfit.

 After opening presents with our family in the morning, opening presents with Grandpa and Grandma A in the afternoon, and dinner at our home with all the grandparents, we went with everyone to the 5:30 Christmas Eve candlelight service. I don't remember it ever being so packed! Wow! It was so packed that we all couldn't sit together!

The Christmas Eve Candlelight Service is a tradition that we are enjoying, and the girls loved holding the candles at the end. 

(Sarah, thanks for letting us borrow this dress! Khloe was so excited to wear it, she kept asking to wear the "Target dress". I couldn't figure out how she knew it was a Target dress (Cherokee brand!), but then I realized that all the swirls on the dress resemble the Target bulls-eye! Haha! Perceptive little girl!)

 After the service we drove around looking at Christmas lights. There is one lake-front neighborhood in particular that goes all out and there is bumper to bumper traffic to prove it. The houses are beautiful to begin with, then they light them up festively and put out luminaries, but then they create these 'light balls' that are hung high in all the trees. It's a stunning sight! After looking at Christmas lights, we started a fun new tradition at our home. We changed out of our dress clothes, layered up in full snow gear (it was cooooooold!) and released four colored lanterns into the air. Just like Tangled! It was so fun! (And just an FYI, even if a lit lantern gets stuck high in a tree, it won't burn it or your house down. Good to know). 

Freshly frosted gingerbread man-shaped sugar cookie carefully decorated with heaps of sprinkles, because "Santa loves sprinkles". Kayla knows so. Then there was a sentimental good-bye with Cherry (as there always is on Christmas Eve night) before Kayla went to bed. A note from Cherry wrapped inside her Twinkle Toes shoe box made her morning the next day! She will cherish that note all year.

The Santa presents are wrapped and placed by the chimney ready for two excited little girls! Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!