Christmas Eve 2011

We celebrated Christmas with my sister's family on the 24th this (last) year. I brought over a couple of gingerbread houses from our favorite local bakery, and Will and I worked hard to decorate it with some mini-Twizzlers, Skittles and holiday M & Ms.

Rachel and Bella also did a little exterior work on theirs:

As usual, both boys loved trailing Joe around and doing whatever he was doing:

My mom made a delicious dinner, we exchanged presents, and then we hustled our kids home to get ready for Santa!

After the kids were asleep, Dave got to work on construction:

Santa actually brought this table a few years ago,

but we just now were able to find a place for it (and a use for it).

We laid out their Santa bags--

anything from the Jolly Old Elf that won't fit in their stockings

goes directly in here, still unwrapped.

As I've mentioned, there's a definite bald spot on the side of our tree;

thankfully, it's not as noticeable in person.

You can see (if you squint) in the above picture that our stocking holders

are four silver reindeer. We bought them to match this one, which my parents gave me a long time ago:

And then all we had to do was crawl into bed and wait for St. Nick ourselves...