Christmas Eve

Scott and I hosted Christmas Eve at our house. It was so different to be the ones "in charge". Our parents have always been the ones to organize the meal and the program and everything for the night. This time we had both of our parents here and we had to figure out how WE do Christmas Eve at our house. It was a wonderful night. It started snowing just as my family arrived from California. Perfect timing huh? So, it was snowing outside and we had the fire and food going inside. My mom gave us the good idea of having a kind of traditional dinner like what might have been eaten when/where Jesus was born. We laid out grapes, dates, tangerines and almonds on the table. We made tilapia (white fish) in a white wine, caper sauce, green beans, carrots, potatoes, rice, flat bread with hummus and grape juice (wine). It was a good meal. Everyone seemed to love the fish, which was good because it was my first time attempting it. I wanted to keep our family tradition of fondue on Christmas Eve alive, so we had chocolate fondue for dessert. Delicious. We dipped pineapple, banana, pound cake, shortbread (made by Fred), cherries, pretzels and marshmallows.
After dinner we had our "program". We didn't get to dress up and act out the nativity play, but we got to read the story from the Bible and sing the Christmas songs that go along with the story. This is the program that my dad arranged and we have always done at my house growing up. We had Scott's mom bring her chimes. On a couple of the songs we played chimes. Scott, Brielle, Ava and I got to open one present before bed. Scott got each of us new pajamas. Yahoo! That is one of my favorite things to get and they are so nice. He got Brie some Tinkerbell slippers that she fell in love with and slept in that night. We all went to bed and anxiously awaited the next day. I couldn't wait for Brie to wake up on Christmas morning!