Christmas Eve

Geez, I am having to resort to my pictures to spark all the memories from this past Christmas. To me it feels like the holiday season was 6 months ago. Time sure has a way of flying by rather quickly. Lets see ... Christmas Eve this year was a little different from normal. We still held the traditional bowling and lunch at Burgerville with friends, but then afterwards we packed everyone and everything up and headed north to my Mom's for the night. Many years ago Spencer and I established that we were not going to venture away from home during Christmas. This year we ate our words. I had a long aching desire to spend Christmas Eve with my parents up north and Spencer was kind enough to oblige. Christmas Eve dinner was held at my sister, Robin's house. She made Mandarin Chicken (a Reed family tradition). It was yummy. She had quite the turnout too. A lot of her husband's family, who I had never met, were there. So at first it was a little awkward, but kids have a way of breaking the ice and soon we all felt at home with each other. After dinner we all sat in a circle around her family room and did a gift exchange. The boys got new Jammie's, which they didn't waste anytime getting changed into. Once back at Grandma's house, they each got to open a gift from Grandma & Grandpa. I thought that the excitement of the night would be enough to keep them up all night, but it didn't. We all slept well.