Mission: Spend Christmas At Home, Christmas Eve

Friends, we did it!  We spent Christmas at home, just the five of us, and we had a good time!

Though this is my eighth year with the title of Mama, I've been slow and reluctant to come to family Christmas.  I can't help it.  I'm an extrovert, and three, four or even five people just doesn't sound like enough for a Merry Christmas.

Exploring what on earth a Merry Christmas is, well, please watch this video.  We saw it at our church's Christmas Eve service.  It was a huge hit with everyone, and also apparently the inspiration for the glowsticks the kids are sporting:

Aogu and I were nostalgic as we watched friends with a new baby climb on stage to play Mary and Joseph. We did that too, back in the day!

After the service, we had planned to drive through Sauganash to see the Christmas lights.  I hadn't planned for everyone to be hungry for dinner.  They didn't want to eat clementines and dried cranberries for dinner?!

So we drove through Wendy's.  Which was not at all in line with my new food leanings, but was fast, and did get dinner taken care of.  OK.  

Driving through the neighborhood was a little bewildering, but we saw the tree that starts on the first floor, continues through the second, and sticks out through the roof (how do they do that?).  We saw the gigantic Rudolph, and we saw Santa's Workshop, Treehouse Version.  I call that a successful outing.

Home again for "Movie Night".  We tried to watch an animated version of The Christmas Carol, but even that was too scary.  So we abandoned it for an animated Christmas Story, in which an old donkey is something of a hero.  

When I was growing up, we had a tradition of opening one present on Christmas Eve.  I had tried to continue that the last couple of years.  But this year, I gave it up.  It would have required the presents actually being under the tree!  The kids didn't remember that we had done that last year, and I was free to wrap all the presents after they went to bed.  Perfect!