Christmas Eve

 We are usually home on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning.  It is a priority that I have set for our Christmas tradition with our family since our children were born.  That was not different this year.  We arrived home from Great Wolf Lodge on December 22 with enough time to prepare for a wonderful Christmas at home.

That said, several things were different this year for our first Christmas Eve at our new home.

First of all, we did not go to church on Christmas Eve (which really bothered me) but we were SICK.  Some of us came down with illness while we were at Great Wolf Lodge, some of us were sick on the way home, some of us were sick once we arrived home.  We had a nasty 2-week fever/cough virus that STILL is not fully out of our system.  So, we stayed home on Christmas Eve both for our own health but for the health of others that we would see at a Christmas Eve service.

Also, this was the first year since the twins were born that we were not packing up to leave right after Christmas.  While our tradition is to spend Christmas at home, for the past 6 years, we have ALWAYS packed the car and hit the road December 26 or 27 depending on the weather.

This year, because I didn't have to pack up the family, and (honestly) because we were not going to church, we RELAXED as a family ALL DAY!

The kids wrapped a few presents to each other (I had all the presents wrapped and hidden away).  I turned on a Christmas movie shortly after breakfast and we had Christmas movies playing pretty much all day, and I actually sat and watched a few (that ALMOST NEVER HAPPENS in the Christmas season).  Also, our kids were all under-the-weather either a lot or a little, so rest was exactly what they needed and they were happy to lay and cuddle.

I found this picture on my phone that one of the kids took while we were watching Home Alone -- the first family movie of the day.

Another new thing was I made French Onion Soup for Christmas Eve dinner, which is a long-standing Sanden Family Tradition, but I have never made it because I couldn't figure out the logistics of making the soup, serving dinner, getting to church on time, getting to bed at a relatively decent hour (for the kids), and getting the nice broiler-safe bowls clean and put away before we had to get out of town 36 hours later.

As much as I always wanted and craved French Onion Soup on Christmas Eve... it just has never made the cut of things I could get done on Christmas Eve.

This year, knowing we were staying home for the evening, and knowing we were staying home the day after Christmas, it just seemed do-able.

We did not have the correct bread, and we did not have the fancy cheese that the recipe calls for, so I fondly called it "Poor Man's French Onion Soup" but the kids really liked it, and it was not as hard as I had worked it up to be in my mind.  When I called the kids to the table and told them to wash up for "Christmas Eve Dinner", the three girls saw the special bowls I was getting out and took the cue from the title "Christmas Eve Dinner" to run upstairs and put on fancy dresses.  You will notice from the picture, they still have pajama pants on, but honored the special meal with a beautiful dress.

After a year of tremendous life changes, tremendous joy, but loads of stressors and transition, we truly had a merry little Christmas, which began with a relaxing, enjoyable, and delicious Christmas Eve.