Christmas Eve, Christmas, and GAME DAY!

What happens when The Pack is up against the Vikings on Christmas Eve?  In our house, a few nerves, game day food, and a very Merry Christmas!

It was just the five of us hanging out at home for a nice long four-day yucky-weather weekend, and I'm not complaining.  I knew there would be a lot of downtime, so I was well equipped with crafts and books to break up the extended periods of mildly-limited screen time.

 Just in case there are any doubts, we kept close tabs on Norad's Santa tracker all Christmas Eve.

Game day meant 7-layer dip.  Except I forgot to buy tomatoes and olives, so 6-layer dip.  Brett, who is always all about the party food wanted to make sure I didn't put "gracamole" in his dip, so he had 5-layer dip.  Which was more exciting than Lydia's lettuce and cheese 2-layer dip salad.

Our friend gave us some Minnesota shaped shortbread cookies.  I put them on a plate with my candy cane dough Packer cookies.  The Minnesota cookies looked good, so I took one, but everyone was sure the Packers would lose if I ate the Minnesota cookie!  So I had to leave it on my plate and wait for the win, or I would have surely been to blame.  Fortunately, the game went the way we wanted it to, so we were all in a good mood to attend the Christmas Eve service at our church.

I immediately confiscated the LED light "candles" that were given to the kids when we entered the sanctuary.  More parents should have done this...just saying.  Lydia wanted to bring her new Bible to church (from Grandma and Grandpa, not Santa).  That seemed like a good idea.  She started reading in a likely place - Genesis 1:1.  But when she got to the part where Adam and Eve were naked, she laughed at the most inappropriate time.  Because what 8 year old doesn't think "naked" is funny?

Brett dressed himself. 

You have no idea how much drama was involved in having Milo in this picture. 

It is our tradition to read the Christmas Story and sing 67 Christmas carols before we open presents on Christmas Eve.  We sing 128 Christmas songs because that is the torture I remember from when I was a kid eagerly anticipating opening my presents and I feel my kids should experience this same pain.😊  But since we had just returned from the Christmas Eve service and already sung 217 Christmas songs, I decided to institute a new tradition.  We all wrote a Christmas carol on a slip of paper, and drew one song from a hat.  Brett's slip got drawn, so we the kids sang the 3rd grade version of "Jingle Bells"...you know, the one where Batman smells.  The actual present opening was pretty anti-climatic (hence no pictures), since we bought the kids a video game system (one big present) and none of them knew what it was from the box.  Time to set out the cookies, and read the other Christmas story...you know, the one where not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

 As you can see, Santa remembered to eat the cookies this year.

 Lydia got her trumpet, Brett got a WWE tag team belt, and Reggie got his star wars spaceship.

 Let's have Santa pancakes.

 Why stop there?  Let's have reindeer pancakes, too.

 There's Pinterest, present at all our celebrations.

And, finally, Christmas dinner. Kids love the gifts, of course, but I love the food and traditions.  Bryan loves the football, but we all love being together.