Christmas Eve

 I love that Sunday was Christmas Eve. We live in a ward now where they pulled together a beautiful Sunday service with lots of musical numbers. It's not Christmas without music. And it was wonderful. I may have gotten teary throughout, but what really got me was the closing hymn--Joy to the World. I looked down and a little girl from our ward was animatedly singing it for the whole world to see. Filled with so much happiness and cheer and the message she was singing was so perfect. I love Christmas. The message, the knowledge, and the joy it brings.

All my outtakes looked like this.

 We had our friends from our ward, the Bezzant family, and our med school buddies Jeff and Diana over for Christmas Eve. It made it so much more fun to have more people eating around the table, more chatting and games. I loved having the Bezzants tiny little new baby there to see how giant my baby is now. We played a couple board games with the kids, and the card game Mille Bournes---which our lovely guests totally starting skipping rules to be nice to our kids, which was super nice of them. And then we had a little nativity and opened Christmas pjs.

Molly was an angel. She was super good at jumping off the ledge to proclaim Jesus' birth.

Our spread of hoagies. Sterling fully embraces this tradition...as you can tell by the sheer number of sauces we have set out for the sandwiches. I love it too. And Jeff had gotten an early present of a smoker and he brought smoked pork I think, and it was the most delicious Christmas Eve hoagie I have ever had.

Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus, and an angel.

Trying to keep the angel from jumping.

She really wanted to carry Jesus.

Jeff is always a good sport. We really have loved having these guys to go through med school with. We may have also stayed up til 3 am playing games with them. It was amazingly fun and so much later than I have stayed up in so long. Of course, the kids were awake three hours later, but I still think it was worth it.

Cutest baby alive.

Those little train pajamas were *supposed* to be too big. But they fit perfect. WHY IS HE SO BIG?!?!?

Christmas Eve was a total party this year and I loved every single minute of it. Getting the kids to bed was a little rough, of course. We had to set out food for the reindeer (Will had brought it home from school) and set out cookies and milk, and read about a thousand Christmas books from the library. 

After that it was loads of Citadels, Dungeon, a new version of Catan that Jeff and Diana got, Sushi Go, and who knows what else. We took a break mid-games to get everything ready, and start to feel magical. I love Christmas.