Some of you may have been missing Christmas since it was a month ago.  I just thought it was about time for me to document what we did.  Sorry for the delay, life happens!  For Christmas Eve this year, we decided to stay home and start our own traditions.  This year, we ended up having my parents join us and it was a lot of fun.  We wanted to do a fancy dinner, so we went with crab and ribs.  I actually ate the crab and thought it was just fine.  This is a strange thing for me to find some seafood that isn't totally repulsive.  We tried snow crab and a colossal king crab as well.  Steve and I both decided the snow crab was sweeter, which equals better.  Prepare to be impressed with me because I clarified my butter for the crab, which we also used for dipping artichoke leaves into.  Okay, I was impressed with myself.  Too bad I didn't take a picture of any of the food or my butter :) 

After dinner, we made some cookies with the kids.  This year, we just did the pull apart kind because that's what works best for the ages everyone is at.  While the cookies for Santa (and us) were baking, we did a child version of the Christmas Story.  It only lasted about four minutes, and that was pushing it for their attention span on Christmas Eve for sure.  After the cookies came out, we saved some for Santa and ate the rest.  We open pajamas on Christmas Eve and we continued with that tradition.  The boys all had fun opening presents and I think they look so cute in their jammies.  Right before bed, Brinton told me that he wanted Santa to bring him a spaceship.  He made him a quick card and drew a spaceship on it so Santa would know what he was after.  (By the way, Santa drew Brinton a cool picture of a spaceship and told him that he couldn't bring a real one because it was bigger than our house.  He was satisfied with the picture and message, so no worries.)  I really like the things we started this year and look forward to more Christmas Eves at home.