Twas the night before Christmas

And all through the house, every creature was stirring, including the mouse...well, make that the hamster. Four feet, furry, small.....close enough! Compared to our typical Christmas Eve day, it was a pretty darn busy day! The bakery we get our traditional Christmas morning strudel from messed up the pick up date so we had to make a trek-and it WAS a trek-to pick it up. Christmas morning without Le Chantilly's almond cheese strudel just wouldn't seem right! After that, a stop at the grocery store to pick up last minute items for the calzones we had to pre-assemble later that day and then finally we were off to our friend's house for a brunch. All that before 11 am!

G and R enjoying the yummy food.....sausage egg breakfast casserole, waffles, fruit, orange coconut crescent rolls and OJ...oh yeah!

Once home we got right to work on putting together our lunch for Christmas day....calzones. Kinda fun to mess with pizza dough while wearing black. I actually stayed pretty clean-I even impressed myself!

And as soon as that little task was done it was the mad race to get everyone dressed so we had time to get food in them before taking our family photo in front of the tree

and the opening of one gift from under the tree. They got matching pj's...well, Laurel's didn't match, but they did coordinate!

Then we ran out the door 60 minutes before church actually started in order to actually get a seat! Man, for such an important holiday, it sure can be stressful! I wish noon mass would count for Christmas eve mass-the madness of getting to church at least 30 minutes ahead of time (my parents and grandma along with G and J were actually there 45 minutes early and saved seats for the rest of us) can take the reason for the season right out of it! Darn catholics that only go to church 2 times a year and therefore take up all available seating! Wow, where did that come from?!

By the time mass was done it was nearing 7:30 pm. We made sure to get a family photo of us all before we left church

And the kids visited the manger scene too-

Then it was time to hurry on home, take a few breaths and get on with more tradition. The kids hadn't written their letters to Santa yet (what? really?) so they had to do that once we got home. I told L and L to let their brothers write the letter for them and just to sign their names or else Santa would NEVER be able to come....they might still be writing! Cookies and milk? Check. Letters out for him to read in the 3 seconds he had at our house? Check. Reading of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas'? Getting there.......first they had to look cute-

Bill and I took turns reading a page each of the story and then it was OFF TO BED!

And Bill and I? Well, I'll just say there was still plenty to do.....plenty! 'And I heard him exclaim as he drove out of sight, Merry Christmas to all and to all, a good night!'