the best christmas eve I've ever had

I was a little worried about Christmas Eve this year since we didnt have the buhler's with us.  It seems like they've always been with us since Anna was born!  We also didn't have the tradition of going to my Grandma Elaine's house for dinner - anytime we are in SLC we do that since my family has been going there since before I can remember.  But it really turned out to be the best Christmas Eve I have ever had.  We kept it supremely simple and focused on what the girls want most: our love and attention.

Rich had to work 1/2 the day, so we started out the day as usual (the girls coming in to snuggle with us) and then I took Josie out for a good run.  We had oatmeal for breakfast.  We read books, played, practiced the piano, cleaned up the house, anna did preschool, did 2 loads of laundry, we made a tart for tomorrow night, biked to the park with josie and let her run around a bunch (julia fell asleep since she got up at 5:30).  It was my goal to NOT yell at my kids ONCE today and to try and say YES to them as much as possible.  I also tried to play with them more than I usually do.

then we came home and had pesto pasta for lunch.  Rich came home around 11.  We went to the rec center and swam for a couple hours.  It was supposed to be a surprise, but Anna overheard rich and I talking about it (she says) and she read it on a list I made that happened to be sitting on my computer while she did preschool.  Dang 4 year old that reads good.  After swimming, and getting dried off with one towel (i left the rest at home!), we went to sprouts and bought food for an inauthentic time-of-Christ dinner (olives, crusty olive bread, fish, cheese, slices of meat, grapes, dates, figs).  We ate our minimal-cook dinner, while playing a game and it took a long time.  I'm still stuffed and we ate at 4.  we gave josie the fish skin and she seemed happy.

 julia was in heaven.  single food items.  meat, cheese, nuts, bread.  happy girl.  In the store we were walking past the meat isle.  Julia pulled rich down to her level and whispered in his ear "get me some meat daddy" or something like that.  So we let her choose the meat and cheese.

 anna was in heaven.  new things to try.  she chose some olives from an olive bar, figs (above), dates

 julia ate so many nuts it was insane.  she is one serious little chipmunk - just look at those cheeks!

 olives, yellow tomatoes in foreground (surprisingly good for out of season)

After that we cleaned up, then anna wanted to direct us in the nativity.  She wasn't quiet sure what to do, so rich read from the bible and we played along.  Julia was being difficult and kept stealing baby jesus.  That made anna mad.  So then I had to sit out with Julia while Anna and daddy took care of the rest.  My tiger stuffed animal collection filled in for baby jesus and the donkey.

 mary, joseph and baby tiger jesus  (we had a real baby, julia's "tiny baby" but she couldn't handle him being handled by anyone but her)

After that we did our second to last present for the month (we've been doing 25 days of christ and learning and reading about Jesus' life each day in December).  We read about the atonement and sang "he sent his son" the primary song.  Anna really likes that one.  The present tonight was a cheesey 80 minute movie about Jesus from a Christian store.  The girls liked it.

We put them to bed at 7:15 and they fell right to sleep!  MIRACLE!  We are going swimming every Christmas eve!