Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve for us holds a few traditions. Growing up in my family we always opened up a present marked with a star by our name. Every year it was the same thing...pajamas! And every year my parents played dumb and acted like they had no idea what we were going to open up! We would all have to put on our pajamas, do a little fashion show, and then get our picture taken. We never knew what we were going to get for Christmas, but we could ALWAYS count on new pajamas! After the picture was taken we would then load up in the van with our pillows, blankets and a candy cane from the Christmas tree and go drive around to look at Christmas lights. We would also have Christmas music playing...who could forget listening to "A Barry Manilow Christmas" cassette tape!!!

Well Christmas Eve in our house is pretty much the same. We all open up our one gift...pajamas, imagine that! They get put on and a picture taken. Then the kids grab their pillows, blankets, and a candy cane and we load up into the Yukon to go and look at Christmas lights. We even stopped at the corner coffee shack and got hot chocolate this year! There weren't very many lights in our area so we decided to head to Fairbanks to say hi to Nana and Papa and to check out the lights I used to go look at when I was little. Much to our dismay, there were hardly any lights on display this year. But Kyler made sure we did not miss them. EVERY time he saw lights he would yell as loud as he could in his little helium voice, "CHRISTMAS LIGHTS!!!" We would get to laughing so hard, that we actually looked forward to him yelling!

We then came back to the house and had some eggnog ice cream and Rikk read us, "Alaskan Night Before Christmas" instead of our usual, "Night Before Christmas". The boys thought it was really neat because it was about caribou and everything Alaskan. They then left out some cookies, milk and carrots for Santa and the reindeer, then it was off to bed with them and more wrapping for me.

Walker got snowmen, Hunter got plaid and Kyler got monkeys with candy canes!