Christmas Eve

I know it's been too long since I've posted anything. We were quite busy over the holidays, and I still haven't completely recovered. This morning I finally got around to transferring the pictures (294!) onto the computer.
I made the huge mistake of deciding to completely organize the house in the month before Christmas. There were still boxes of stuff I hadn't gone through since we moved from Vermont five years ago! Of course, before things can get better, they have to get worse when you organize, so a week before Christmas we had to wind our way through boxes and piles of throwaways, Salvation Army, etc. I did all the kids' clothes and toys in their four bedrooms, as well as the den (my crafting stuff), both upstairs bathrooms, and my bedroom and closet.
I was amazed at what I was able to purge from the house, and I've vowed never to be a pack rat again. I had to pull a couple of almost all-nighters (up until 3am and 4am) on Christmas Eve and the night before in order to get wrapping and stuff done for Christmas.
I never got around to putting the second tree up, and we didn't decorate our family tree until Christmas Eve after dinner. Also on Christmas Eve afternoon, Merlyn asked if we could make cookies for Santa. I had frozen all that dough weeks ago, and ended up making them Christmas Eve after dinnertime! If Merlyn hadn't reminded me, I probably would have forgotten altogether.


Bryan was actually glad that the tree wasn't decorated until the last minute, because he is always in charge of the lights and he hates doing them. Usually I like thousands of lights on the tree, but at 6:30 on Christmas Eve I wasn't about to be picky. This year we went and cut down our tree at a tree farm nearby. They had acres of trees that they hadn't been able to keep up with the pruning on, so we could pick any tree for $10. We cut the top seven feet off of a 20 foot tree, and left the bottom there. It was a lot of fun searching in the snow with the kids for a tree we all liked.












This was the first year that Bryan's Aunt Claire came over after dinner to spend time with us on Christmas Eve for the first time. We were supposed to string popcorn, but Bryan was stringing the lights, so we just hung out and had fun. The kids enjoyed modelling the sunglasses Aunt Claire gave them.



































Merlyn absolutely loves her frog mittens from Aunt Claire (remember, Merlyn loves frogs!). That night, she tried to help Myles wrap his presents with the mittens on -- she didn't want to take them off.



After Aunt Claire left, I got out the tree decorations. I put the fragile ones on near the top of the tree in between trips to the kitchen to get cookies in and out of the oven. I gave the kids boxes of unbreakable decorations, and they basically decorated the rest of the tree by themselves. It was very cute to see three or four ornaments on one branch.






We leave cookies and milk in the den along with a note to Santa every year. Santa lands his sleigh on the porch roof and comes in the den window since we don't have a fireplace, so the kids sprinkled glittery oatmeal for the reindeer onto the roof of the front porch. Then Bryan reads "The Night Before Christmas", our traditional Christmas Eve bedtime story. They all went to sleep quickly despite the excitement, probably because it was way past their bedtime!