Christmas Eve

I kinda feel like this year was stressful. The not knowing of our move, the impeding date of a job ending, and the fact that Daniel only got Christmas day off made it..well I will be honest, hard. The past several years Daniel has taken the week off between Christmas and New Year and it has been great. This rotation would not allow it. We decided to wait until Christmas Eve to head over to meet my family. Initially Daniel was going to drive us over for the weekend, back to work, drive back for Christmas, back to work, etc. We decided it wasn't worth him being on the road all that extra time as well as, essentially adding more stress.

We spent some time at the park on Christmas Eve Eve.  The weather was perfect!

Fun at the park on Christmas Eve Eve

Ultimately things worked out fine and not as we had planned, even better than we imagined. We headed to my grandmothers house much earlier on Christmas Eve and even had time to finish up the shopping. (Yep I apparently have become one of those that waits until the end!) We arrived and I began the extreme wrapping of the presents I had delivered to her house. Every year I have visions of decorating each present with individual attention however, in the end I am always racing against the clock and tie an easy ribbon with a little decoration.
We had hopes to make cookies with the kids and read Christmas stories before bed. That said, I know in reality the kids will really be excited next year and we can do all those fun things!  I love the picture below from the evening:

Wyatt - Now listen this is what is going to go down tomorrow..
Matty - Whaaatttt??

My parents arrived, we had dinner, put Wyatt to bed and in an instant Santa arrived! He was greeted by a card Wyatt made and of course cookies and a Coke. Santa has to stay up late and he needs some caffeine!

We must have all been good kids this year!

 Daniel really enjoyed assembling a Tricycle and he was right in all my apprehension that Wyatt loved it! My mom and I assembled the other toys with Daniel's help..because who knew they were so hard to put together! LOL!

 

Christmas Eve was a success and we went to bed around 3am because Santa had quite a bit to finish up when he came down the chimney. Regardless we had a blast and were excited about the next day! 
Luckily, we aren't in that wake up super early stage of kids on Christmas morning and that makes for a fantastic day!! Wyatt woke up around 7:30-8ish had some breakfast, played, and went back down for a nap around 10. We ended up doing presents 11:30 after breakfast. It was fantastic! I know many of you are up at 5:30..sorry!
Up next Christmas "morning" and day! 

And no..still no assignment! Hopefully we will hear something early this week! Keep your fingers and toes crossed!