Twas the Night Before Christmas...

or should I say a couple nights before. Friday night we carried out one of our oldest Christmas traditions...CAROLING! I love singing and I love Christmas songs and I love my nieces and nephews, so it was a good time. Here are a few of the cuties with my mom.

 Then it was the night before Christmas for real. My dad usually read the story of Christ's birth from the Bible when I was growing up. This year, he read while the little ones acted it out. The acting wasn't quite right on time, but it was pretty cute. Here are a couple of the lambs - Nathaniel Jr. and Isaac.

Here is our Joseph and Mary, aka Quentin Jr. and Katelyn.

 Our angels, shepherds and lambs swarmed Papa.

 Finally the wise-men arrived to give their gifts to baby Jesus. My favorite is the camel done by the twins, Lauren and Lexi. Great job girls!

 After the reading, the girls then performed some of the Christmas songs they had learned at school. It was really cute watching and listening to them. This is Baby Q (as I still refer to him) playing with Papa's hair. So funny because I remember how that was the first thing we did when we saw my grandpa Sorenson as a kid, play with his very little hair.

 After the grandkids' performance, we went to this house in town that was all decked out. Here are some of the grandkids with Frosty the Snowman.

 We waited in line because Santa was coming to visit.

 I love this picture of Tanner, he didn't like Santa at all but he definitely wanted his sucker.

My camera card got messed up but I downloaded a program that was able to rescue all of these pictures. The one below still lost part of the photo, but I still think its a super cute one. 

 Here is the entrance to the house.

 My oldest brother Quentin with his wife Nancy, Autumn, twins Lauren and Lexi, Quentin Jr., and Isaac.

 Third oldest brother Nathaniel with his wife Tennille, Eliza, Katelyn, Nathaniel Jr., and Tanner.

 The main reason for this big event, for this little one's first visit with Santa. Merry First Christmas Zoey! She didn't cry and she seemed to like his beard.

 Fourth oldest brother Jonathan and his wife Christine and baby Zoey.

 After we all got to see Santa, it was time to head home so Santa could deliver presents!

Here is a portion of the house decor. Someday I want to decorate all out like this.

 I went home to wrap presents and get gifts ready for the morning.

 After my mom went to bed, Jonathan, Christine and I cleaned frames and got the photos ready for my mom's Christmas present. Then dad came out to start hanging the pictures.

 I laid out all the photos in the arrangement I thought best on the ground, then measured the distance between them and put it on sticky notes. Dad went to work hanging them but it was taking quite a bit of time.

 Jonathan was waiting up because he had to bring in dad's present from the car and thankfully he had a good idea. We traced the frames and cut wrapping paper to their size, then taped those to the wall to where we wanted the pictures. This moved a TON faster and with much less measuring.

 By this time though, it was 2AM! Mom was on call with the hospital and so she could get up at any time, I also didn't know if I would be able to get up with an early alarm. So I had the brilliant idea of waking her up and bringing her out so I could guarantee seeing her reaction. She didn't have any pictures of her kids up in the house so I got recent pictures of all the kids and their families, I picked out frames and we hung them up on her living room wall for all to see. MERRY CHRISTMAS! She looks amazing for coming straight out of bed. She was pretty happy and I was so happy we had done it.

Then I helped Jonathan bring in dad's gift. Here is our tree and presents. Then around 3am I finally went to bed.

 Dad's gift was ammo cases, painted and stenciled by my siblings at Thanksgiving and gun cases. He was still carrying one of his guns to the range in the box it came in! Due to the camera card mess up, his face is blurry but he was pretty happy.

 My mom after church standing by her favorite present. The center photo is of her and my dad at their wedding reception almost 35 years ago.

 We waited until after church before we opened presents. Zoey with her first stocking, she seemed a little uncertain of what was going on.

 She liked all her presents though and got right to work playing with them.

 Surprisingly for a 6 month old she is quite good at unwrapping presents.

 She helped Papa with one of his.

 After all that work, she was pretty hungry. Look closely, she totally sticks out her tongue and licks her lip. I've never seen one so young do that. I didn't get the best photo of it, because she is quick with that little tongue of hers.

 Here I am with all the things Santa and family brought me. Not pictured were my tires, I got four new tires for Christmas. My other favorite present was from Tennille and Nathaniel's family. We had actually missed it and started eating and cleaning things up when I saw it and asked who it was for. Jonathan told me it was for me. It's the picture frame with "Family" in the center. Also with it were pages of notes from all of my family - parents, siblings, in-laws, nieces, and nephews. It was so sweet and I totally started crying before I even read the notes. Then I read the notes and cried lots more. It's a present I will never forget.

That night we had Christmas dinner and everyone came over.

 It was delicious and there was plenty of food.

 Here is the girls' table,

 those cute boys were at the counter...

... and the adults' table.

 Zoey got her own spot, near the adults.

 Look at that smile.

Helping with kids and dishing up adult plates.

 Finally a few made it to the table. Then I got my plate and stopped taking photos.

 Dinner was so delicious and I'm glad we did it. Especially because I hadn't had the typical Thanksgiving dinner in New York. It was a busy, family filled Christmas holiday and it all went too quick. Hope yours was just as wonderful.
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!