Christmas Eve 2011

After Leavenworth I finally got around to making all the kid's traditional matching Christmas jammies. This year I made 5 jammie pants out of 3 XL men's pants and crafted Pella an outift out of four of the pockets and flowers for headbands out of the scraps. Dada took all the kids, except Pella, to his cousin's house for a get together so I could get them done - in one day!

So we were ready for Christmas Eve - the last day of the multiple advents! The kids all take turns each day rotating between turning on the Christmas tree lights, opening a wrapped Christmas book, sticking a character on our cloth advent nativity and waiting. It was Jasper's day to put baby Jesus on the nativity. Notice the headband? Yep, that was a three day trend. The first day they all wore them, the boys wore blue, to let everyone know they were boys, and the girls wore pink. Jasper just kept it going.

We delivered our Lakewood friends our super mini honey gift in the bus.

While we stopped at Albertson's for Dada to pick up some food for us, I took their picture, and the girls looked so cute in their matchiness holding Pella, I had to get one of them too. Pella wore her "first Christmas" outfit from Grandma.

The great thing about the bus is that every kid can get out on their own without having to do and undo all those car seat buckles.

After our deliveries we went to Lake City's 4:00 Christmas Eve Candlelight service. It was so beautiful!

I cried. I love the symbol of Christ's love being shared through us as His light in this dark world, spreading that light to everyone around us.

When we got home - the revealing of the jammies! Of course I had to make Opal's with ruffles!

They put them on before we watched a Christmas movie and headed for bed.

Well, the kids did, Dada stayed up for me to make his most delicious cinnamon rolls for our birthday cake for Jesus and I kept him company. He's so cute to watch in his Christmas jammies. (Artwork in the background, by Kivi. She made about 11 pictures of the nativity [bottom, next to Dada's bottom] and put them all over the house. She also made pictures of our family to give as gifts to everyone.)