Christmas Eve

 I was so excited to host Christmas Eve this year.  I spent hours crafting (with & without my cricut) to make gifts and the table scape.  I also decided to use my cricut to remake The First Noel Bell Chart.  Huge fail.  It took SO LONG and wasn't the best choice.  In the end it threw off my timing (I was finishing as people arrived) and the whole evening felt rushed and wonky.  But oh well.  It looked pretty cute.  I didn't get a group picture because I was in such a hurry to get the hot chocolate going.  Then the kids talked Grammy into going to get the pajamas.  But no one told me they left.   So I found out when they were already on their way back.  Ugh.  Maren and her crew took off unexpectedly also. Thankfully the Barretts helped me throw the stockings together.  We opened all our gifts because we were leaving the next day. It was fun and great to be able to clean it all up.  But it was also kind of a let down as well.  I also took no pictures of the kids and their gifts or their stockings.  So much work and no photo evidence!  Darn!

The girls got Chromebooks.  And Ben got Tetris (which unfortunately he already had :/) and a big pack of metal fidget puzzles (that he picked out).  Derek got a weather station that he said he wanted but that he has yet to unbox.  (I may just return it and he won't even notice.). I got a candle and a couple of puzzles.  Turns out I am hard to buy for?  Everyone except Derek seemed to love their SW gear I made them.  I hope they hold up okay in the wash.  

Here are the pics I managed to get (by handing Maren my phone for the tablescape pics.)    

Anyway, as a mom at Christmas, I spend a lot of time thinking about what I screwed up.  And, I've had way too much time to marinate in the Christmas frustrations with what happened on Christmas day...see next post. 

Pajamas!

The nativity.  One of the sweet girls I minister to is pregnant, so she was our Mary.  

Ben played his trumpet "Do you Hear What I Hear?"  He nailed it!   

I was quite proud of using to use my circut pen to do the cute name tags. 

We had 28 people!  It was quite the full house!