Christmas Eve 2016

This was a Christmas Eve to be remembered.  The kids all got new pajamas to wear for Christmas Eve.  Pinkie got DC Superhero Girls.  It looks like this will be the last year Pinkie will be getting pajamas from the kids section.  These were almost too small for her.  Link got Star Wars pajamas in a favorite color, purple.  Creeper got Mario Bros.  Bear got Batgirl "nightgown costume."

This picture happened later in the evening, after all the kids had dinner and settled in to watch Prep and Landing, followed by Prep and Landing: Naughty vs. Nice.  This has become a yearly tradition.  It's also a tradition that makes me realize how much television companies must hate families on the East Coast.  The shows weren't even over until nine!  That meant the kids had to be hustled off to bed so that Santa could come.  It was an exhausting night for me.  Thankfully the kids went to sleep almost as soon as they were sent to bed.  I think it's because they all wanted Santa to come.  We watched Santa's launch on Reindeer Cam, then watched our shows.  We even tracked Santa on the Santa Tracker.  I think that helped motivate them to get to bed on time.

Of course, that wasn't the start of the day.  We began the day with lots of cleaning.  To keep Bear out of the way we decided to make a Christmas potholder.  I'm an evil mom.  I made Bear work on patterns.  Bear picked a pattern for the colors and we had to follow them.  Now there's a Christmas potholder hanging on the tree.  I suppose that's a good place for it.  As always, I realize just how challenging those things are for little hands!  I can't imagine how I must have done them when I was a kid!

Pot holder making wasn't the only bit of creativity we had.  The printer I got as a Christmas present to the family was set up, so I printed out Christmas themed coloring pages for the kids.  This kept them busy and out of my hair while I served up dinner.  We had our big turkey dinner then instead of on Christmas day.  Christmas Day is always Chinese food for dinner, unless we go over a friend's house.  The coloring pages were a brilliant idea.  I get the feeling I'm going to be shelling out a lot in printer paper, between school workbook pages (which the kids surprisingly like doing) and coloring pages for the holidays, I think that thing's going to get a workout.  That's not even taking into account the things that I may need to print up!

As things settled down for the evening I was able to finally start to relax.  The kids got to put on their pajamas.  Bear particularly loved the Batgirl nightgown, especially because it had a cape.  How often do you find pajamas with a cape?  Especially one as sparkly as this one has.  I'd gone out earlier in the day to get the pajamas, braving the cold, rain, and crowds.  It was our special Christmas Eve present, which they got on Christmas Eve, combining two traditions into one.  Usually the kids all get at least one present on Christmas Eve.  There's also a tradition where someone has to go out and buy at least one Christmas related item on Christmas Eve.  Usually this ends up being some kind of chocolate for the stockings.  This year it was pajamas, an afterthought really, but I had a gift card, and surprisingly they were all about half off, some even more than that.  At the end of it there was money left over on the gift card and I'm pretty proud of that.  Since we usually aim to get the kids a pair of new pajamas every Christmas, I guess you could say this blended all three traditions, and it wasn't all that expensive.  Unfortunately, waiting until so late made for incredibly limited selections, but it all worked out in the end.

Finally the night ended with all the presents neatly under their respective trees.  Bear had the live Norfolk Island Pine.  Creeper used his Christmas cactus.  Link used our sorry looking bonsai that's looking more like a Charlie Brown tree these days.  Pinkie, being the oldest, got the biggest tree.  I almost wish I'd swapped Pinkie and Bear's gifts as Bear had the most of all.  Bear, being the littlest, got spoiled, which is okay by me because Bear is usually the one left out or forgotten about.

If you were to look at pictures of the number of presents this year in comparison to last year, the amount is far smaller, aside from Bear's.  I have to admit, I'm pretty happy with the turnout though.  It feels good to not have our tree spilling over with stuff, Here's the shocker.  Next year we might even be able to fit everyone's stuff under the same tree!  I guess that's the joy of becoming a little more minimalist.  We're filling the house with less quantity and more quality than we have in the past.  Then again, we have two more rounds of Christmas to go before the holiday is over.  I just hope their Christmas is as good as I hope it's going to be!