Christmas Time is Here

Its Christmas Eve morning which means we're well into our holiday traditions. We returned from Rita and Darrell's house last night, after a visit that was fun, relaxing, and tasty (such great food!). We even had some snowy roads as we got closer to home that has put a dusting on the ground - enough to pass as a white Christmas.

This morning we clean the house, Ben makes his minestrone soup, and we prepare other goodies for our Christmas Eve dinner tonight. We are blessed to have both sets of parents spend the evening and stay over so they can be with the kids on the magical Christmas morning. We even sing Christmas carols around the piano (Maria will do a lot of the playing this year, proving that her two and a half years of piano lessons have been a good investment). Then we let the kids open one present - which is always a pair of new pajamas and a book to read. That was my own tradition I started several years ago that the kids haven't gotten tired of yet. Then we leave cookies out for Santa, sprinkle reindeer food (Sam made at preschool) in the yard, and off to bed. The kids are always so excited and up with (or before) the sun on Christmas morning, when the madness begins.