Christmas Eve deserves it's own post

Yes, yes it does because it's like it's own holiday.  And ours was pretty packed this year.  First, Greg's sister-in-law does an international breakfast every Saturday but she pushed it to Sunday (Christmas Eve) this week.   It was a Nordic-themed breakfast in honor of Santa.  We had waffles and juice with smoked salmon and goat cheese.  It was delicious.  We went straight from there to church since they moved church to 11 am just from Christmas Eve.  We tried to get a few pictures of the kids in their coordinating outfits but Zora was in a super bad mood for some reason.

I thought this was the perfect Christmas Eve picture--Rex playing the piano and Alice standing next to him not singing because she didn't know the words to the song but the picture was cute.

Christmas Eve dinner was at our house.  We rearranged the furniture and brought in the outdoor table to make room for everyone and it turned out quite nicely.  Greg smoked a delicious turkey and I made the rest of the food the night before so the mess so pretty manageable.  We also did a giant cheese spread from appitizers, which I failed to take a picture of.  Greg actually did the cheese.  I was just going to get some cheese and crackers but apparently you're supposed to get a certain number of certain types of cheese and blah blah blah.  Greg took care of it.

 I decorated the tables with a bunch of bottle brush trees so I made a rosemary tree cake, which I thought turned out really cute.  I am so clever.

After dinner we played Bingo, which was fun, but as usual, despite my strict no-crying rule, Rex ended up crying over his dollar store prizes.  They're from the dollar store!  Actually he was mad because he got four prizes but two of them he didn't like so he gave them to Zora and Alice so he only ended up with two prizes but then the cousins left a bunch of their prizes so he took those too.  I mean, really NO CRYING!  Anyway, we also decided to add a new rule this year, you must play your own card.  I invited a family from the ward over and the mom played 3 cards--one for her, one for her husband who wore bunny slippers to my party that I got my China out for and was too lame to play his own card, and one for her 2-year-old who just wanted to play.  They ended up with half the prizes.  Next year, you have to play your own card.

 We finished the night with the least-reverent, worst Christmas pagaent ever. I let my nephew read the narration and he was not loud or bossy enough to control the silly 8-and 7-year-olds.  I used to make my kids rehearse but I felt silly so I stopped but next year, I will narrate and we'll probably rehearse a few times.

Stupid kids couldn't even take a picture.  Bryant as narrator, Wesley the Wiseman/Simeon, Henry the Wiseman, Cora as Mary, Zolaikha as the angel, Zora as a sheep, Alice as Anna, Rex as Joseph, and Cash as a sheep.

Everyone was gone by 8 and we spent a few hours cleaning up and being Santa before heading to bed ourselves around mid-night.  Luckily I had already wrapped all the presents and Greg only had to put one toy together.