Christmas Eve

On December 23rd we picked up two Girls from Japan to stay in our home for the week of Christmas -- they were to go on a fieldtrip on Dec 24th during the day, but since things get cancelled quite easily around here due to snowy conditions, their fieldtrip was cancelled indeed. Now I am thinking to myself 'what am I going to do all day with 5 kids while preparing still for the celebrations to come that evening'... we did puzzles and the kids went outside. I wasn't nearly as prepared for the evening as I would have liked, but it worked out just fine.This picture is taken at about 2:00 in the afternoon... 11inches of snow in our backyard.
This year things were changed up a bit... we were going to be hosting Christmas Eve with Lorraine and Family since she recently moved to a smaller house that isn't able to hold all of us for our annual gathering. With snow in the question for Christmas Eve day already the week before, Lorraine brought out all her gifts for everyone and the stockings for her kids just in case she would be snowed in and not get to our place. As we woke up to snow the morning of the 24th, we knew there wouldn't be much of a chance that Lorraine would be coming. She did make it out during the day to pick up Miranda (her daughter) so that she wouldn't be alone for Christmas, but wasn't able to risk staying here for the evening with the snow amounting the way it was. Jody and Micheal (Our Nephews, Lorraine's sons) and Mike's girlfriend Kylee came though at 8:00ish for a little get together here. It turned out really well I think!
So with those changes, we had made plans to have my Family over for appies before/after the Church Service depending on what time we chose to go to church (there are four services we could choose from). Well, again with the snow we wondered how the day would pan out... and this is how it went: churches across the City were cancelled which is a bummer because who doesn't love going to church on the 24th?! But my Family still ventured out and came for some appies. It was a neat way to change things up this year -
Here are some pictures from the evening once Mike, Jody and Kylee came. We waited until 10:00pm and then opened the stockings first. Here is Elijah, Akari, Sammy and Rio. Gabi was in bed finally by 8:00pm (she was very tired from not regular naps that day) and since she has been having terrible nights for the past week before then I decided to not wake her up for the gifts...I figured she'd likely just wake up autmatically as she has been doing, but this time she didn't until everyone was gone.Helping Mom open my stockinga goofy shirt that was in Elijah's stocking (this was supposed to be a "souvineer" from our planned D-Land trip that we decided not to take) Daddy trying on the stethescope from a Doc.Kit from Aunt Lorraine for the kidsElijah helping Mike open a gift from his momA picture compliments of Eljah - he took probably 30 pictures while waiting for the gift-opening to begin... here's Kylee, Mike and Jody:Merry Christmas! (more posts to come)