Christmas Eve

Opening presents with Grammy

Opening presents (extra parts for Mrs. Potatoe Head)

Joe opening the poster of President Obama that my parents gave him (as a joke)!:) Umm...later he burned it in the wood stove.

More opening presents (notice Eli peacefully asleep in his swing in the background)

A high chair for Bitty Baby

Green Bay Packer Pom Poms

Indy got into the action too- here he is exhausted from ripping up all the wrapping paper!

Lily in her new cheerleading outfit- watching G-Pa as he plays with one of her new puppets

Above: G-Pa rocking Eli

Below: Eli and one of his Christmas presents

This year we decided to spread out our Christmas celebration over a few days (well, really we do this in some form most years, but still...). With two little ones it was far less overwhelming for everyone and it felt like Christmas day for 3 days in a row! So here are some pictures from Christmas Eve morning/afternoon. We opened gifts in the morning- and it pretty much took us ALL morning. Actually we stopped shortly before lunch because even Lily was getting a little tired and just wanted to play with some of her new toys! We finished a little bit later when Eli was awake to join us!:) Later that evening we had a really fun and wonderful dinner of all appetizers! After dinner we headed off to church for the Christmas Eve service (pretty much my favorite part of Christmas)!

We returned home from church to find that "Santa" had left his big, red Santa sack outside our door! And right as we were walking up to discover it we spotted one of "Santa's Reindeer" in our back yard! Okay, it was really one of the MANY deer that live around our house, but Lily really thought it was a reindeer and it just made the whole evening seem that much more magical! It really was too perfect! We finished the evening exploring Santa's sack, placing baby Jesus in the manger, and celebrating Jesus' birthday with a very special birthday cake! Perfect!