Christmas 2010

If you were to ask me what my favorite day of the year is, it wouldn't take me two seconds to tell you that it's Christmas Eve. As fun as it is to open presents on Christmas day, I still love Christmas Eve more.

Back when I was a kid, my mom tells me that one Christmas Eve me and my siblings were bouncing off the wall. So they took us out for the day. We went bowling, went out for lunch, and saw a movie. We then went home, stuffed ourselves silly with appetizers and watched Christmas movies. It totally stuck and it's how we've spent our Christmas Eves ever since. Every year one of us siblings would get a chance to "plan" how our Christmas Eve was going to go. It was pretty much the same thing every year, we just got to pick where we went out to eat, which ranged from delis, to Chinese buffets, to steak houses.

Glenn and I really wanted to carry on this same tradition with our family, and staying home in Philly made it easy. We started our day out with bowling, the Bostons joined us. This was probably the funnest time I've had bowling with my family because the kids are big enough to bowl on their own (for the most part). Jayda especially did great. And bowling alleys are so cool, their bumpers go up and down depending on who's bowling. Not that it mattered, I'm pretty sure Sky smoked us all!




Afterward we had lunch at Chili's...


And saw Tangled at the theatre. I'm pretty sure it was the cutest movie I've ever seen.

After that we went home and with the help of the Matson family, feasted on all sorts of appetizers while watching Christmas movies. The kids got their yearly Christmas Eve gift of pajamas. They also put out cookies for Santa, chocolate chip, because those are Santa's favorite ;)

We laid out our stockings...


And went to bed. Santa laid out the gifts, and then hung up newspaper between the hallway and the living room so that no one peek without mom and dad there (another tradition we grew up with).

The kids were a bit underwhelmed with the newspaper, in all honesty I think when they woke up they forgot that it was Christmas. Skyler came in and asked for cereal, and Jayda asked to use our bathroom "cuz there's stuff there." After a bit of explaining they got it, and Glenn and I got up so they could break through the paper.



After that the present opening ensued. We started with stockings and moved to the big stuff. Everyone had a really nice Christmas and it was so dang fun to have kids old enough to really understand what was going on. I just love Christmas so much, I'm already excited for next year!