Christmas Eve Traditions

December 24, 2012                                                    

I love having Christmas Eve off from work, but this year I get the entire week! (and then some) Unfortunately Chris didn't have today off. We have a lot of Christmas Eve traditions including making cookies for Santa. This year we decided to make sugar cookies and frost them at Grammy Dean's house. I got two packages of sugar cookie mix, but Chris said I should get four so I went to Walmart to pick up two more. I bought cake icing because I wasn't sure what to get and I didn't want to make it. Plus we didn't have the tools to squeeze it out. 

We ended up using two packages of sugar cookie mix and made quite a few cookies. They came out better when we made the dough thicker. We would roll it, although the boys helped a few times. They would pick out the shapes to cut. We felt the bigger ones would be easier to frost. 

While the cookies were cooling we watched Santa Claus is Coming to Town, one of my all-time favorite Christmas movies. The boys did a great job when it came to frosting. They didn't make a huge mess and they were pretty creative. We used up the frosting pretty quickly because some cookies had a rather thick layer on them! It was a special time to spend with the boys and Grammy Dean and we hope to make it an annual tradition.

All day the boys had been checking out NORAD Tracks Santa. It's a website that tracks where Santa has visited and delivered presents. Nicholas was constantly asking where he was and spent a lot of time keeping track of where he was going next. They posted videos of Santa flying through different countries too and he enjoyed watching those. It was very fun watching the count of presents delivered climb higher and higher. The total count on Christmas morning was 7,060,919,100.

By the time we got home it was time for a quick snack and then off to Christmas Eve service. I love all the carols we sing and the children performing the nativity. Nicholas had a tough time towards the end of the service, but we made it through and then it was time to open our Christmas pajamas. 

This year I didn't go with red PJs and I didn't get them matching sets. Nathan had said many times he hoped he got Ninjago PJs and luckily that is what I had got him. Nicholas got Angry Birds. He told me he was getting pretty bored of his old pajamas! Then it was time to watch The Polar Express under warm blankets. I love this tradition of ours. The movie is so special and is a perfect movie for Christmas Eve. We left our cookies and milk out for Santa along with the Letter To Santa books the boys had made.

Before bed the boys listened to Grampa Gray read them Twas the Night Before Christmas in the recordable storybook he gave them. Nicholas went right to sleep and Nathan read for a while and was asleep by 10 I think.