Christmas Eve at the Edwards...

This year it was just the four of us for Christmas Eve. The last few years my parents have come and spent the night with us but this year they stayed home. We had a fun night and I'm extremely grateful that we had decided to make it easy on ourselves and order the bulk of our dinner from Honey Baked Ham...due to the tornados/24 hours without power we ended up not even being able to finish all the baking I normally do and even Christmas presents for Andy's family. Anyways, so we had a nice meal and we juggled feeding both kids. It was a little wild but we laughed. We chalked it up to this is our normal right now and it won't be like this every year. (Very true.)

Afterwards, we got the kids ready for bed and I wanted to do Christmas Eve pictures. Well, Avi-Cakes was on board with this but AG was not. The first photo is the only one I snapped of him smiling. (Have I mentioned that he's almost three?! And that we are experiencing the joys of being three daily?! Ha. Never a dull moment.) After pictures and treats we got the kids settled. Andy and I watched Home Alone 2 since we watched Home Alone the night before while we wrapped presents. Then it was off to bed so that Santa could come...

Merry, Merry Christmas! It's been a roller coaster of a year and we are grateful for all that we have learned. Looking forward to 2012 with much hope.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was wonderful and full of new traditions. Ginny and I had been planning for weeks to get together and make cookies and the only time that ended up working was Christmas Eve morning. So we decided to cook a big breakfast together and then make cookies. Hopefully, in the years to come AG and Emma will look forward to helping us bake. Andy and Josh cooked breakfast and did a great job. The Roberts stopped by to help us bake before setting off to their own Christmas Eve celebration. There was something warm and cozy about the whole morning that I just loved. I loved that we were able to spend time with great friends. I loved watching AG and Emma playing together. I loved baking with one of my dearest friends. I'm grateful that my child has wonderful people in his life. Again, there is something warm and cozy on a frigid day about baking with friends you love.

That afternoon I cooked a big dinner and my parents came up to join us for the night. While I cooked Andy and Dad put together furniture for Caro's new apartment. (We love having her around the corner.) After dinner AG got a bath from his GiGi and some sweet snuggle time before heading to bed. Andy throughly enjoyed putting together AG's Little Tikes workbench! He was like a little kid...it was fun to watch how excited he got over how "authentic" the tools were. We left AG's gifts from Santa out on the hearth. We listened to the the sound of the rain outside while watching "White Christmas" to finish the evening and wished it was snowing instead outside. :)

It was a great first Christmas Eve as a family.