Christmas Eve Gathering

I put together Cheeseburger Soup and a few hors D'oeurves in the morning and we made last minute plans to have over our friends from our small group. We combined efforts with them and some other friends to "adopt a family" over the holidays. So we got together, ate food, played outside, wrapped presents, played games and then two of the daughters and I delivered the gifts in drive-by fashion.

We were at home on Christmas Eve and Christmas this year since Corey's brother, Anthony, came up the week before. I so enjoyed being able to share the holidays with friends!

wrapping gifts

Carys enjoying the wrapping paper:)

I'm not sure the boys ever stopped throwing snow at Corey,
even though it ended up with them being thrown in the snow...
that's probably what they wanted!:)

Carys trying to see what the guys are doing outside -
she always wants to be in on the action!

A few more joined the fun!

Christmas Eve at the Moka

We couldn't pass up a chance to hang out at the Moka on Christmas Eve.

Presents are Fun!

Christmas at Corey's parents was the first time Caedmon seemed to understand about presents...and was all about them! We had to remind him a couple times there and at home that it wasn't yet time to unwrap them. This is what I found Christmas Eve morning.:)

I didn't catch him in the act,
but he was using the long gift
as a golf club with the smaller package.

Christmas Eve Morning

We haven't yet started our own family tradition for Christmas. About the only tradition we have is to go pick out a tree and cut it down ourselves. Corey and I have never bought gifts for each other and Caedmon is still too young to know what's going on. But I got him a couple of things this year and decided we'd let him open them Christmas Eve morning before we headed up to Corey's parents' house.
I'm glad I only got him two things, since he could have cared less about the second gift after opening the first. And his first give was just an ornament, more for me at this point than him I suppose, but he sure did seem to like it!:) I wanted to find an ornament that would be significant of something in his life this year and decided on a book since that is his love! I found The Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle in a cute ornament! The other gift was a book I knew he'd love since it had real life pictures of deer in it!:)

He found them!:)

Hmm, now what to do?

Gettin' the hang of it...

Fascinated by his ornament

His book, and his right hand is signing "bird" -

his version of it anyway -

it's supposed to be up by the mouth...