Christmas Eve

The last few weeks have been AWESOME!!!! Our family has thoroughly enjoyed this beautiful Christmas season! We've had lots of time off from school and a nice break from just the busyness of life in general. It's been simply wonderful! Shane was home for about ten days too, so that made this time of year especially sweet.

Christmas Eve was spent with our sweet family. 

Unfortunately, I only have a few pictures of our time together because my new computer deleted all my pictures from Christmas Eve AND Christmas Day! 

It's a long story, but we've done several thorough searches, and they are indeed gone.

Really really GONE! I was so incredibly sad about it, but you know that verse in the Bible about Mary treasuring all things and pondering them in her heart? 

Yeah, well that took on a whole new meaning for me this year:/

We were able to recover a few pictures (like 4 out of the 200 I took), but the software that we used to do it wanted to charge us over $100 to save them again. UGH!

And we would have gladly paid it too, if we were able to recover more than just FOUR pictures!

We opted to just take pictures of the pictures though. Sigh.

The pictures I do have are from my family or my phone...and there aren't many. 

Oh well...

Back to Christmas Eve...

The evening began as we joined my family for the candle light service at church.

Here's Miss Sophie Lu getting her "curlies" on for Christmas Eve!

Love my girly girl!

And here is my sweet crew all ready to go!

There is something so breathtakingly beautiful about worshiping the Christ Child by candlelight.

It's such a special time to be together!

After church, we headed over to my parents house for dinner, presents and FUN!

Appetizers and desserts were on the menu for the night.

It's tradition and it's the BEST;)

We had an absolute blast! 

 Christmas is such a fun time with so many sweet little ones around! 

And, like always, precious baby Emery was the star of the show! 

I love this picture of the cousins tracking Santa.

My sister, B, gave us this book and movie about Gladys Alyward, a missionary to China;)

(And just as a side note, the kids and I are halfway through the book and they are totally LOVING it. It blesses my heart so much to see my kids get so excited about anything China related.) 

As the night came to an end, it was time to put on our 

 Christmas jammies and head home to get ready for Santa!

Once home, cookies and milk were placed in just the right spot, 

and the reindeer food was scattered through out the yard.

Finally it was time for that so called "long winters nap".

And a "nap" it was as Christmas morning dawned very VERY early in this house.

Next post...Christmas day:)