Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve, my dad, Myrna, and Myrna's daughter, Rachel, came over to our house for dinner and gifts. Andrew now has the present opening skill down, and he was opening the presents faster than I could keep track of what was going on! Christmas will always be different without mom here, but things have gotten easier, and we are lucky that Myrna and her family are just such wonderful people.

Andrew's elf left him some reindeer food to give the reindeer on Christmas Eve, so he was excited to get out there and sprinkle it on the snow.

He also put his cookies out there for Santa...

This is the first year that he had a true understanding of what was going on, and he was SO excited. He had two advent calendars that we did each day in December, and he knew that Santa was coming on the last square. Each day we would count down how many days lefts until he would come to our house. He was so excited that it took him an hour to fall asleep. He jumped up and down on the bed and continually checked out the window and said he didn't hear sleigh bells. When I told him Santa doesn't come come until kids are sleeping, he said, "Aww, man! You gotta be kidding me!" He did fall asleep and Santa got to work. :) Since he had become such a fast present opener, I removed all the gifts for family and only left gifts for him under the tree. He's like a bulldozer! I wrapped as many small things as I could to make it look like Santa was a very generous fellow.