Christmas Eve Festivities!

As has been foretold (hee hee), we spent the first part of our Christmas Eve hanging out with the Erickson side of the family. We headed over to Daniel and Carly's ward building for dinner, a play, the famous candy bar game, and a pinata. The kiddos were pretty excited for every single part of it, particularly the nativity scene play. All in all, it ended up being a really fun night and a good tradition I think our family would like to maintain, even if just in our own family units.

We started off the evening eating dinner with everyone; the food was terrific, and it was fun watching Sara try and eat off of everyone else's plates! Right after dinner we started getting the kids ready for the fun nativity scene. Carly made some adorable sheep ears for the babies, including little Sara Grace! She looked too cute!

The rest of the cast from our family looked equally adorable: Karianna as the angel, JD as Joseph, and Jordan as a shep-oops, I mean a wiseman. I thought he was supposed to be a shepherd, but turns out we needed an extra wiseman. Good thing his shepherd costume was flexible!

The Nativity started off with Joseph leading Mary on their donkey to the City of David. JD looks very protective of Kaitlynn, who is obviously carrying a child! Great donkey work Steven!

The most adorable picture of the evening, Mary and Joseph holding hands over the baby Jesus!

Elizabeth leading her flocks in! Sara is obviously taking Steven's lead!

Karianna gave her angel speech to the shepherds in the field; she did a great reciting it! She did have it memorized, but ended up relying on her paper. Either way, she did a wonderful job!

I am sure the sheep regularly played with ladybugs.

The 3 Wisemen! I love this picture!

Jordan presenting his gift to the baby Jesus. He ended up laying his gift on top of the baby, blanke style. Not sure if that's considered blasphemous or what....

After the Nativity scene, we watched a short video on Luke 2, which was actually quite moving having just acted it out. The whole time, the kids whispered, "Look that's me!" or just narrated what they had just acted out; it was adorable. We played the candy bar game afterwards, which the kids did surprisingly well at, and opened Carly and Daniel's traditional poppers. We ended the evening by breaking open the homemade pinata-a regular box wrapped in wrapping paper!

We let the kids each take two turns first; I think they managed to shred some of the paper off that indestructable box...

The box was finaly broken by one of the adults, and as expected, the kids came running. I actually got a turn before the boys stepped up to bat, and although I didn't bust the thing open, I am proud to say I hit it hard enough to break the "bat". Hee hee. I look like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Such a fun evening for Christmas Eve! We certainly missed those who couldn't come; it would have been fun to have all the cousins participate in the nativity! I am sure we'll keep these traditions up in years to come though, and I am already excited about those opportunities! Merry Christmas Eve!