Christmas Eve

Our Christmas festivities were very different this year.  It was not bad, just different.  We spent much of Christmas Eve packing our bags and getting ready for California.  I wanted to be all ready so that I didn't have to worry about it on Christmas.  We headed over to my parents in the afternoon to get ready for the big Christmas Eve dinner.  Mom was busy cooking away as usual and everyone else was off doing their own things.  Finally Min, Matt, Brent and Sharna rolled in and it was time for the fun to begin.  I must say things just don't seem complete without Nat and her family but I just have to keep telling myself someday...someday we will ALL be together to celebrate the holidays!!!  I really look forward to that "someday!"  Dinner was wonderful as usual, but I knew it would be.  We had fun sitting around laughing and having a good time.  Right after dinner we were able to Skype with Nat and her family which is always so much fun.  It is kind of funny hanging out with them over Skype, but I always say that it is better than nothing!  We decided to open our gifts from my family because we weren't quite sure what Christmas day was going to bring and we were afraid we would be rushing!  So although it was not part of our normal tradition, we went ahead and opened our gifts and then we did our annual tradition of reading The Night Before Christmas, the story from Luke 2 and then listened to Silent Night.  After all that it was out the door so we could get our kids off to bed!  We sure crammed a lot into one day but it was all good.