Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve we headed out to an early church service and dinner.  About an hour before we had to leave I reminded my family cheerfully that mom was going to want to get a picture of everyone all dressed up, so we were going to leave a little bit early so that we had time to do so.  I do this on some holidays and the first day of school and it is my way of eeeeeasing them into the idea of cooperating for pictures.  I have to put the idea in Chris and Jayce's heads a little bit before we go because they are both prone to grumpiness with the surprise factor of being asked to stop and smile.  Luckily they were ready.  Kind of.

In an ideal situation, there would be all four of us.  We don't necessarily need to be looking directly at the camera but overall pleasant facial expressions are good.  Good lighting would be nice and a non-ugly background is a bonus.  If our fancy clothes weren't covered by our warm coats that would be good, and if we all had feet then I would be shocked.  

(On a side note, when we were at Disney World this summer I handed the camera back to a helpful Disney employee and said, "Can you take just one more and make sure that our feet are in it please?  Sorry…thanks!!!"  Cropping at the ankle is just a personal pet peeve of mine.)

It turns out that the Perfect Christmas Eve Picture was never attained.  BUT there were plenty of great ones.  And I kind of think that the storytelling factor of a series of imperfect pictures is pretty fantastic.

The Christmas Eve service was cute and Christmasy and kid-friendly and short.  They finished a little early and then served hot chocolate, mince pies, and Christmas tree cookies, which you won't need me to tell you was amazing.    

Then I took the kids up by the tree an they gave me fantastically sweet and happy sibling Christmas pictures.  Chris stood behind me and made ridiculous faces to get them to do so.  Everyone was on point. :)

Jayce had requested "a long tie like dad wears" for Christmas so I got them together for a tie shot.

We were early for our dinner reservation which was just across the street from the church, so we took a few more pictures outside to kill some time, including these below that will be making their way into Hannah's wedding video slideshow.  Chris looking at her, then Hannah smiling back at him…priceless.

But my feet weren't so lucky.  It's okay though, they know their place.

We moved onto the pub, which was absolutely packed, but luckily the service was pretty quick and the food was AMAZING.  We had thought it would be traditional pub food, but instead it was more specialty pizzas and Italian.  It was one of those meals where I kept stopping to say how absolutely delicious it was in between bites, and even though the dessert menu had really great options, we were entirely too full for any of it.  Which is kind of how you want to feel after a special Christmas Eve dinner.

The kids ate well and behaved perfectly amidst the craziness, and we took them home to get ready for the main event.

Jayce wrote Santa a note and set out cookies and carrots.  Hannah dress Santa a picture (and requested that I help with the beard part.)  

Dear Santa,

Here are some snacks to help you on your journey all around the world.  Pick 3 of your best reindeer to have these carrots, and you hungry Santa can have these smashing good digestives.  Is it true that you have 8 reindeer?  How do you get all around the world in 1 night?

It was a really late evening, because poor excited Jayce had a really hard time getting to sleep.  But it was a good thing that he did because a special delivery arrived just for them shortly after.