merry christmas eve

For those of you who celebrate, I hope you've had as nice a Christmas Eve as we have.

It's 10:15 pm now and all three of my children are in bed - the same bed. Just as my siblings and I did until we were teenagers, they like to pile into the same bed on Christmas Eve.

I started Christmas Eve day in a rather foul humour that I just couldn't seem to shake. I've had a run of beyond rotten luck lately and last night I minorly wrecked my car and I was in a very bad mood about this. I am a terrible driver and I ran into a large bush in someone's driveway and dinged up my car a bit, including knocking the mirror off. I tried not to let this bother me, but it did.

And during the first half of the day, the children were not, shall we say, at their best. They were obnoxious and I was cranky and with every passing hour I felt more grinchy and less Christmas-ey.

Plus, my oldest didn't feel well and at one point there was some discussion of canceling our traditional Christmas Eve plans altogether.

They did check the Norad Santa Tracker every few hours, which was really cute.

Finally, at 4 pm we met my sister and brother in law and the cousins at church for the early service. The kids were still cranky and I still felt dour, but by the end, we all seemed to be getting in the mood. I love the part at the end of the Christmas Eve service where they dim the lights and we sing "Silent Night."

Then we all headed over to my sister's for dinner, which was amazingly yummy and we all began to cheer right up. My brother in law had made this literal feast of Italian food. Truly fabulous and the cousins were having lots of fun together.

After supper, we all sat down for what turned out to be nearly two hours of opening gifts together. We always let the cousins open their gifts from one another on Christmas Eve, which they love. But we also open a big box of silly, small gifts each Christmas Eve, each with a funny note personalized for each child. These come each year from the mysterious and never actually seen "Uncle Louie," who has been an Allison Christmas tradition since my father was a little boy. We read each note out loud and watch the child open the little gift, so this takes a looong time, but the kids never got bored and laughed and enjoyed all the gifts each of them got.

I also opened my sister's gifts to me tonight and she gave me the new Garrison Keillor novel, which looks hilarious and a book on the history of Zen, so I will have stuff to read this week...

This was just great fun and by the end of this, everyone felt jolly and in the spirit, including me. Then we baked cookies for Santa, left half for the cousins and took half home with us when we left for home about 9:00. We got home, got into PJs, set out cookies and milk and reindeer food and then they all got in bed and I read "The Night Before Christmas" to them and now, I hope they are all just about asleep because I think Santa might have work to do...