Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve began with a fun art project.  Christian came up with with a great idea of making a Christmas tree via paint, and I have to say, I'm super impressed with Micah's tree!  It was also Reid's first time with finger paint, and while he seemed to enjoy it, it was short lived due to his eating of the paint.  Sigh.

Christian helped Micah ever so slightly on his project, but I'd say that Micah did about 95% of the project himself.  Artist in the making, perhaps??

After naps, we headed to our church's Christmas Eve service, where kids joined in the service.  Micah will periodically stay with us in church at times for some or all of the service, so I wasn't too worried about him, but active Reid is another story!  Thankfully, he has taken to books quite a bit more lately, so we were able to bring his favorite, which kept him entertained for much of the service.

 Post service, we made our way through the live nativity scene they had on hand, gave our gift for Jesus, and then went to get our annual family picture by the tree.  Crazy to think that next year at this time we'll be having three kiddos in that picture!

"Cheese"

We met up with our friends the Sjogrens post service at none other than Five Guys.  Yep.  A greasy burger joint, dressed in a suit (Christian, not me :)) for our Christmas Eve dinner.  Apparently impromptu gatherings for dinner on Christmas Eve don't pan out too well in a "regular" restaurant.  With four kids, however, this might have been just as well :)  Below is Micah with his friend Alex.

We arrived back home and the boys were able to open up one gift before getting ready for bed.  A little people Nativity set.  They didn't play with it too much, but I know it'll be a great gift for years to come.

It was a great day, of course culminating in the reason for the season with the birth of our Lord, Jesus Christ.  This is the first year that I've seen it actually starting to connect in Micah's brain, and I'm looking forward to celebrating Jesus' birthday tomorrow with my family.