Christmas Eve

Christmas is a bad time to get behind on blog posting. I can't believe how many pictures I've taken. And I want them all for my blog book. So here I go. Beginning the long trek of getting them on my blog. Enjoy if you like. Feel free to click away from my site if you get bored.

On Christmas Eve my Aunt Rhonda and her husband Jim, came over from Ventura to spend the night with us. We had our traditional enchilada dinner (YUM!!!). Then for dessert, I made red velvet cake. It was a cake my mom made every year at Christmas time for my Dad. I had forgotten about it for years and then stumbled across the recipe about a month ago. I honestly couldn't even remember if I liked the cake as a kid. I just remembered my mom making it every year. So I called my mom to help jog my memory and all she could tell me was, "well, you always ate it". ha....So I decided I would make it. It did NOT disappoint. It was a delicious cake. Paul loved it and even said it was his new favorite. So yay for new family traditions. Anyway, after dinner, the girls wanted to act out the story of Mary and Joseph going to Bethlehem. They were pretty funny. I swear they got "into character" and everything. Check out the pictures below. Paul was the donkey. Jim played the innkeeper. It was a great re-inactment.

After reading from the Bible, the kids got to all pick out a gift to open. I usually have jammies or slippers for them on Christmas Eve, but my mom wanted to start a new tradition of her buying the kids jammies. I should have pulled them out of the pile, but I honestly didn't know which ones they were. So the girls picked out random gifts. Brandon scored and actually chose the jammies. So he's the only one wearing new jammies on Christmas morning. Next year I'll be smarter.

Here's the goods after "Santa" came to visit. All set up and ready for the kiddos come morning time.

Santa brought us all tickets to Disneyland. That was the kids big gift. Unfortunately, it wasn't until the afternoon of Christmas DAY before Ashlyn really realized that we were gonna to go Disneyland for "FREE"! It was pretty funny. I got it on video, but it's too long to post on my blog. But basically, the kids came down. We had to DIRECT their attention to the Santa Mickey and help them figure out that the tickets were to DISNEY and not to go see the "Princess and the Frog" movie. Then once we told the girls that Santa had given us tickets to Disney, Leah just shrugged her shoulders and moved on to her stocking and Ashlyn stood there holding on to Daddy's leg, not really sure what to think. Oh well. They got it eventually. And we all got a good laugh out of it.

Boy Santa was hungry. He ate all FIVE of his cookies and drank all his milk. Must be hard work getting all those toys out, wrapped and under the correct tree. A man needs his energy. Hey wait a minute. I wrapped all the gifts and transported them from the Northpole (aka my brothers house), and set them all out on the couch and under the tree. I should have gotten those cookies. Darn Santa. He owes me!