Christmas Eve

The kids have been bouncing off the walls all month, and on Christmas eve day they were even more excited as Grandma and Grandpa had arrived, and they knew they would be opening gifts that evening. All day long I heard "Is it time to open presents yet?"!

Earlier in the day we decorated sugar cookies for Santa. Lily wanted to make pink cookies for Santa.
There was a lot of eating of the decorations!

The red tongue gives Tyler away!

The finished product

Late that afternoon, we went to Christmas Eve service at our church. The service ends with the lights dimmed, candles lit, and the singing of Silent Night. It's quite beautiful.

Then it was home for our traditional Italian Christmas Eve dinner of tuna spaghetti and anchovy spaghetti...........yum!!

Our family

The kids with Grandmas and Grandpa

After dinner, the kids went out back and put out the reindeer food for Santa's reindeer. They had each made a bag of food earlier in the day.

This is one of my favorite pictures! Isn't it precious?!

Finally...............presents!! The kids opened the gifts they received from their Grandparents and Aunts and Uncles.Lily loves anything to do with her kitchen.

Michael doing his Iron Man moves!

The Hess trucks were a big hit again this year.

Now we'll see how long it takes the kids to go to sleep tonight! :)