The Daily Bailey: Chrismas Eve/Day

ok, moving on to Christmas. I am only a couple months behind now :)

This year our Christmas tradition had a big change. Since my grandparents moved to the village we had to figure out what all of our families wanted to do for Christmas this year and begin new traditions. We started with Christmas Eve dinner at Julie and Roger's with everyone. It was wonderful that we could all still be together for some portion of Christmas.

At first I was sad to let go of a tradition that was so dear to me and something I always anticipated and looked forward to. However, as our evening continued on, there emerged many examples that made this new tradition great for its own reasons.

First was that we did not have to rush from dinner to get started with opening our presents so that we could finish by the time we had to go to the Christmas service at church. We had no presents and could spend more time with each other in conversation...

and a new activity....dancing!

and just enjoying being together as a family.

and of course, more dancing! Sonja LOVED it and was pretty good.

Sonja had many dance partners and it was so fun to watch her.

After Christmas Eve dinner we headed over to my parents house. We put the kids to bed and once my parents returned from the service at church (the rest of us had gone to the earlier one before dinner with our kids) we opened up our presents. This is a funny thing to me because I remember when my parents were the ones staying up late with my aunts/uncles opening their gifts to each other. Now we are the adults doing this and this is the start of a new Christmas tradition that I hope my kids cherish just as much as I do. Of course we had to continue the family sleepover so we all stayed at my parents.

When Addison and Caroline woke up Christmas morning they were greeted by filled stockings and presents from Santa! I didn't get a picture of either....whoops.

Enjoying some snack pack pringles that they got in their stocking. That Santa sure does know what they like!

No visit to Mor Mor and Grandpa's is complete until they have been able to pet and kiss the cats. That usually goes for me too since the black cat, Bjorn, is actually mine from when I lived in CA.