Christmas Eve

Man, I am just falling off the daily blogging wagon.  John and I were both asleep in the living room by 9 pm last night.  We might have stayed there all night, save for a patient phone call around 10 pm that roused us up.

So I think I left off at Christmas Eve.  Mama and Missy departed a little before lunch, after being my babysitter so I could do hospital rounds (twice!).  The kids and I had a lazy afternoon of cookie baking:

They cut them out, I did the piping, and Will did the M&M's and sugar pearls.  They were cute, if not especially tasty.  (I am just not a fan of sugar cookies.)

We then went to church for the early service.  The children's choirs performed Christmas Around the World as the Peanuts Gang, and Will was Snoopy:

He didn't have to speak, just gave Lucy a slurpy kiss:

Anna performed with the preschool choir.  They were part of the Italian nativity; according to the program, in Italy all sorts of people and animals join in the nativity, so we were supposed to dress the kids as tradespeople, animals, etc.  Anna was a chef with an apron and wooden spoon:

The wooden spoon wasn't too much of a distraction, but it did pose a challenge when she tried to do the motions to the songs.  It made me giggle:

In front of the Chrismon tree:

And back home in front of our tree:

We drove around and looked at Christmas lights for a little while, then donned PJ's, put out the cookies and milk and reindeer food, read the Christmas story, and went to sleep!