Christmas Eve 2012

The afternoon of Christmas Eve was spent in food preparation.  Lots and lots of food preparation and it was well worth the effort.  Matt makes the best turkey and even better gravy.  The missionaries joined us for dinner and the after meal program.

Aliyah as the Angel Gabriel.  She was in a hurry to go do other things so she just shouted "Jesus" and was off.  But she sure looked cute.

Faith landed the role of Mary this year and took her role seriously as she pondered these things in her heart.

Here is Cannon as the pirate Joseph dreaming.

 They were so proud to move into the starring roles this year.  They're really moving up in the world.

And the angel appeared to the shepherds and they were sore afraid.  You can see just how sore afraid Elinor is and what lovely ballet arms the angel has.  And why am I looking at them like I am watching true art?

Then the wise men from the East came to offer their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh (or in this case a wrapped ukelele, Little People, and Fancy Nancy books).

Is there anything that screams TRADITION like Christmas Eve pajamas?  I love them.  Grandma and Grandpa Cannon gave Faith, Cannon, George and Aliyah their jammies and Abe and I gave to the older kids.  Everyone was happy.  Faith was especially happy with her purple warm-up suit/PJs.  She has been wanting a warm up suit to wear to gymnastics.

Abe and Clark got matching pajama pants but I like this picture because it looks like they just got one humongous pair of pants to share.  Hee hee.

Matt did the honors of reading "Twas the Night Before Christmas".  My dad always read us this poem from the same book just before going to bed every Christmas Eve.  Matt did a great job because he made the same little jokes at just the right places that our dad used to do.  For example, Matt read "He turned like a jerk" instead of  "He turned with a jerk."  Also instead of saying "Laying a finger aside of his nose " he read, "Laying a finger inside of his nose."  Ha, ha ha!  It just never gets old!

Our most bizarre Christmas Eve tradition is the reading of The Cajun Night Before Christmas.  Grandma Fox gave us this book back before we even had any children and I'm not quite sure why we read it.  We aren't from the south, we don't have any French ancestry, we can't really relate culturally to it, and I don't think we understand half of what it's talking about.  But it is funny to listen to Abe read it as it is written in a heavy cajun dialect.
Still, it's weird.