Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve just felt special to me this year.  It felt like we were living it in sepia tone.  Like it was picture perfect, even if we weren't picture perfect.  We spent a large part of the morning making food for our Christmas Eve buffet (a Buckingham tradition), and baking cookies for Santa.  We were all in the kitchen together, all pitching in as a family, and everyone was behaving and enjoying it.  It just felt special and right.

 Can you find the cookies under all that sugar?

In the early evening, we went to a child-friendly service, then came home to our Christmas Eve "party" (a Madding tradition).  Actually, this was our supper.  We ate Christmas cookies for supper.  No wonder it just felt right.

 We got cookies ready to share with Santa.  Each child picked one or two to put on Santa's plate.  For the next few weeks Ellie lamented that Santa ate them ALL!  Mind you, he only ate what was on his plate.  We all shared the rest of them, but for some reason Ellie felt like he should've shared what was on his plate.

John made a great note for Santa with a picture of a dinosaur.

dere Santa thoes couckese ar for you. hav a Marrey Chistmis.

 I love this picture!  Can you see the unintended optical illusion?  It's a brontosaurus eating leaves off a tree, but when I first saw it from a distance I saw an 80's dinosaur with a purple ball cap.
Then we left the cookies out for Santa.  I had to include several pictures because the progression cracked me up.

 This is what we go through when we try to get family pictures.  At least they were all juiced up on sugar cookies so they were all in a good mood.

Afterward we tried to calm down a bit,

 and we snuggled in to read the Christmas story together.  Believe it or not, the kids went right to bed.