Christmas Eve

It's Christmas Eve!  YAY!  It's even better because my husband is HOME.  I'm so happy to have him back.  Now I feel like it can be Christmas.

My traditional Christmas Eve has changed over the years.  As a kid my parents and I would get together with our cousins so we could have dinner and exchange gifts.  Dinner was often Chinese food.  We would alternate houses and as we got older, my cousin & I (both of us are only children.  He was the brother I never had) would come up with reasons why it should be at our house.  It was fun.  Then we got older and we stopped getting together.

In the teen years my parents & I also started going to Christmas Eve services.  This was often a candlelight service.  I always loved the end with the lights out and all the candles lit.  After service we would head home and put all the presents under the tree.  We never put the presents under the tree until Christmas Eve because my mom was afraid that someone would look in the window, see the present and break in and steal them.  After they were all under the tree I was allowed to open 1 present.  Any present I wanted.  Sometimes two, depending on how excited we all were.  Then I would get into my new jammies and head to bed.  Unlike most children, I liked to sleep in on Christmas morning.   True story; My parents had to wake me up more than once on Christmas morning to open presents.  The older I got the earlier I wanted to get up.   I love the surprise of Christmas morning.  I NEVER looked for my present ahead of time.  I wanted to be surprised and I like the suspense.  It's always worth the wait!

2007 Stockings

Christmas Eve day was usually spent out buying stocking stuffers with my mom.  We would deliberately wait to buy these items.  Mom usually already had stuff, so this was extra.  I'm the kid that got more than one stocking.  Has anyone else ever gotten more than one stocking?  In my defense one year I got a pair of shoes in a stocking.  They were a pair of flats and they were the only thing in there.  As I got older and started doing stocking for my parents, I realized I'm just like my mom.  I tend to buy too much, so my parents would often have more than one stocking too.  I think it's a family thing!  Is it any wonder that I love stockings?

Now that I'm married, we're still working on our Christmas traditions.  It's our second married Christmas and thankfully we get to celebrate together.  I'm not sure how we're going to spend today.  I know we need to go grocery shopping.  We're also going to Christmas Eve services.  I think we're just going to enjoy being together after being apart for 2 months.  Having him home is the best gift I could get this Christmas!

I hope you have a wonderful Christmas Eve!  How will you be spending it?

oh, in case you're wondering...at 31, my parents still get me new jammies for Christmas Eve.  They got some for The Man too!