Christmas Eve

*In an effort to get caught up on my blog before summer I am doing talk to text on my phone.  I am trying to proof read as I go, but am not catching everything and am not fixing mistakes like capitalization or punctuation.  I figure something was better than nothing, and this is the best I can do right now. 

As I mentioned in my previous temple post on Saturday morning, on my way to the temple, I decided to listen to a YouTube video my cousins, Hayden and Jackson, made for their YouTube channel, Stick of Joseph. It Was a narration of scriptures, putting 3 Nephi and the New Testament in chronological order along along with musical numbers. It was so powerful and beautiful, I knew I wanted my children to see it. As I was listening and driving in my car, the sun was just coming up and I knew that I wanted them to have the same experience.

On Christmas Eve morning, also a Sunday, I woke up early to prepare. Jason and I went in and woke the kids up at six in the morning. They found these bags to light their path down to a dark living room with only the light of the Christmas tree. They had hot chocolate waiting for them.  We sat on the couch and cuddle blankets and watched this special Christmas devotional. The kids loved it and it felt Holy. 

However, as best laid plans usually go, I forgot to turn off the oven and the hot chocolate boiled over and burned on the stove. So I had a fun little Christmas Eve activity cleaning my stove from burnt milk.  

Devotional was over I sent out this brunch/treat table for the rest of the day so the kids could just come and graze.  And then we headed off to church. 

After church during lunch, Jason started our annual reading of the Best Christmas Pageant Ever. 

Then we Frosted sugar cookies. 

The older kids may have gotten a little carried away and had a little too much fun frosting their cookies. That’s all I will say about that.

Around 4 o’clock, Noah and I ran over to the Clark’s for their Christmas Eve buffet. They have it every year and I love that they invite us, but most of our family doesn’t like soup so it feels mean to make them sacrifice a yummy Christmas Eve dinner for a little sociality. But Noah has renewed his friendship with Emerson so he wanted to go. I was grateful and we headed over for about an hour.

I ran home to finish our Christmas Eve dinner of a seafood buffet. It might be our favorite dinner of the whole year!

I am in love with our new front room. I just loved our new table for the holidays, and that with our Christmas pictures.  This year we had a tree in the front window of our beautiful room. It made me swoon all season.

Then we watched a Muppets Christmas Carol together. We watched it last year. It didn’t go great with Dane and Eve. They didn’t really get it and just kind of were bored and distracted everyone.

This year they were a little to into it and got really scared. Ha ha, you can’t win.

I took this picture of myself to remind me to blog about the emotions I was having. I’m grateful that I did because I wouldn’t have remembered. Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day, and almost all other holidays and birthdays is like putting on a performance for moms. We spend months preparing and we have a short time to put on the show. It requires total mind and body and spirit. It is often working almost 24 hours straight for a few days in a row. People are mad and disappointed, and also overjoyed. You can’t please everyone and often have people telling me that you’re wrong.  And sometimes they’ll be right. You can’t do everything right even if you try. This year was particularly busy. It was probably the busiest Christmas Eve we’ve ever had. But as I said, sitting there watching a movie I don’t particularly like with my family under the glow of the Christmas tree, knowing I had at least four hours worth of prepping for Santa to come. I couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming feeling of peace, joy and love. Being engaged in the work for my family and my children is all I want to do. I know I wouldn’t have had this moment of gratitude had it not been for all the work I have been into it. The top part of this paragraph definitely sounds like I’m being a bit of a martyr, the words sound that way,  I recognize that. But it’s not how my heart feels. It’s just reality. It is hard and I don’t want to pretend that it’s not. It is often and I don’t want to pretend that it’s not.   but it is oh so worth it.  I hope I am always wise enough to sacrifice myself and my time for my family because I have learned that when you lose yourself you find yourself .  

After they went to bed Santa came.