Christmas Eve

Because the TV was delivered on Saturday, we had to stay home and play with it, and have a movie night.  We didn't end up heading down to Pa's until Sunday morning.  We hung out Sunday and Monday with cousins, grandparents, great aunts and uncles.  At Pa's house, it is tradition to use actual socks for stockings and the kids look forward to decorating them each year.  In retrospect, we should have done this before it was practically bed time, but hey!  It's Christmas.  What is bed time at Christmas?

I wasn't about to let Kelsey decorate her own stocking, but she crawled up in Uncca D's lap, and "helped" while he did cousin Kelly's.  For Kelsey, we just reused the one from last year.

Daddy helped Dylan make his perfect.

Ashley's was quite artistic :)

While I had my camera out, I went in the other room to get one of Pa.  I have very few pictures of him smiling, but when I asked him to cheese it up for me, he gave me a ridiculously humorous smile.  Unfortunately, I wasn't fast enough to get THAT on film, but I got this good one right after as we were all giggling :)

Kelly wasn't particularly interested in decorating a stocking, so it was a good thing she was being taken care of .

After stockings were done, it was time to open presents.  In hubby's family style, they open all the presents from each other on Christmas Eve night.  It was noisy and messy, and I won't bore you with all the details.

This year, hubby and I were careful to select presents that we could "claim" to give to the kids on Christmas Eve.  I am pleased to report we made good choices and the kids really liked their presents :)  Kaitlyn, my little budding photographer, got her own point and shoot camera.  Kari got a magic trick set with all kinds of props and a wand and hat.  Kelsey got a book from Shutterfly that features just her and Dylan (I made one of the girls before  Dylan was born, and he wondered where "his" book was).  Dylan got a pack of green army men.  He immediately opened them, and has already lost a few I am sure.

Problem was, he took a nap earlier in the day, so he stayed up until almost 1am playing with them.  It made for a tired Santa the following morning :p