Christmas Eve

    After Christmas Eve mass, everyone headed back to our house. Normally we meet some family friends for dinner, but plans changed last minute, so we picked up dinner to-go from Bonefish and enjoyed a laid back dinner at home.      By special request, I made the tres leches cake I made last year for dessert. But my cake was by no means lonely, as we also had a delicious caramel cake, petit fours, reindeer chow and all of the goodies we made during bake day.    We opened a couple of bottles of champagne and opened a few gifts. {And drank some of Aunt Boo’s white russian!} The three kids opened their gifts from their godmothers, as is tradition. And, as always, were very spoiled! {Can you tell this is when Emory started feeling sick? Such droopy little eyes!}   Baby Boland was too little to open his gifts from Aunt Jo, so Emory helped out. Also on Christmas Eve, the girls {my sisters, Emory and I} get to open a Christmas ornament. This year, since ornaments aren’t very appreciated by boys, Watson and Boland each got a train to add to their collection. Thanks to Ms. V.V. for loving on Baby Boland while I stuffed my face with caramel cake supervised my children’s present opening!  How cute {and old!} does my baby boy look in his pullover?!?! Thanks Aunt Boo!   Emory was struggling by the end of the night, and I didn’t want her to feel horrible on Christmas morning, so we chugged a little medicine and set out our treats. Cookies, brownies and milk for Santa and carrots and reindeer chow for the Rudolf and his friends.      And while we were doing the above, this chunky monkey dove back into a piece of leftover cake. The girls and the kids changed into their Christmas Eve pj’s to get a few pictures. Aaron decided to run upstairs and put on his pajama pants from years ago, which led John to grab his out of his car, and before we knew it, the boys had squeezed into our picture! And I was so happy that my mom got, not one, but two cute pictures of our little family…finally! I had just been saying we didn’t have any pictures of the five of us, and while it’s not perfect, it’s the best I could imagine with three tired kiddos. And with that everyone headed home, while we headed upstairs to the babies to bed.

I am almost thankful Emory was a little under the weather, because otherwise I think it would have been impossible to get her into bed and asleep with all of the excitement and anticipation.

Thanks to everyone for continuing this little ‘dessert, drinks and gifts’ tradition! We love it and hope to continue until our house is busting at the seams with dozens and dozens of cousins!!

Just a few more hours until we see what Santa brought!