Christmas Eve

We hope that you all had a very Merry Christmas and are well into enjoying the New Year. I suppose it's about time I update you on our holidays, huh? :) Christmas Eve was a rather relaxing affair. We started the evening by making gingerbread, ok, graham cracker houses. It's a rather cool trick that Ms. Melanie taught us. Rather than fighting with soft, crumbling, unable stand pieces of gingerbread, we let the kids design their own buildings with sheets of graham cracker. We pulled in their little outside table and loaded it with decorating possibilities. One of our children was more interested in eating than decorating, but eventually she decided to make her own little winter wonderland. Any guess as to which one that was?

That's right! Amelia! Do you know your Beaven kids, or what? Here she is with an extreme look of determination on her face. You know, it's much easier to think when you put your tongue into it!

In the words of my favorite commercial..... TA DAH...... (more on that later!)

Daddy and his boy working out a scene from The Polar Express. See those train tracks?

Abby ended up making a play area including a running course, trampoline and hopscotch. For Pokemon, of course. Haven't you heard of the Christmas Pokemon?

Ok, so this is where you see what a bad yet flexible mom I am. We had no carrots. Instead, Santa's reindeer had a celery treat at our house. You have to have variety in your diet, right? If you can get a close up of the picture of Marshall on the table, his hair is hilarious! He was three in the picture and his hair was crazy curly and way too long, but I couldn't bear to cut it.

Jeremy and I spent the remainder of our Christmas Eve much like most other parents of small children, I suppose. We finished some last minute wrapping, put out the presents and got a head start on the next days cooking. Santa's cookies & milk dwindled as the evening wore on (ahem... JEREMY!) and the celery ended up in our stuffing. It was a nice evening and the kids were so excited!