Christmas Eve

 I loved Christmas Eve this year!  

Bud and Jane were visiting and Pete took them on a little excursion to Volant while I finished the mounds of wrapping and some last minute food prep.  The weather was quite warm -- Colsen said he was ready to fire up the BBQ and take a dip in the pool.

Then in the afternoon we walked to church for a candlelight service.

  I was struck when we arrived by how many friends we had all around us.... the Unverzagts besides us, the Browns and Decaspers behind us, and all kinds of other friends in our sight lines.

As Ethan (rector) said later, these beautiful moments are a cure for cynicism.

Then we walked home for a charcuterie board dinner.

This year we've started a new tradition -- drawing names in our family to be each other's "secret servant" for the month of December.  So on Christmas Eve everyone revealed themselves and gave their gifts to each other.  I was surprised that almost no one really knew who their secret servants had been!

Finally we ended the night with another new tradition that no one was as excited about as I was -- giving each child a new book to take to bed with them.  I gave them books that I thought were good....  and got mild responses.  Regardless, they were bundled off to bed for the big day tomorrow!

(The next day I gave them some library books I had checked out for the break -- the lastest in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.  Those brought MUCH more enthusiastic responses -- and were even fought over.  I try.... but sometimes I succumb to the vapid products of our culture in exchange for those smiles)