Christmas Eve

This Christmas Eve was special for more reasons than one. The first obvious reason is that Neal was home! YEAH! And it was so wonderful to be together! The other reason it was special is that we got to spend it with Tyson (my brother) and Valerie and their two adorable children, Nikolai and Kyndra. Tyson and Val live all the way in Japan, and came to visit us for the holidays (us being Kari's family and my family, and Val's mom, and whoever could come to Cali to see them while they were here). We really missed Kari and Mark and their family on Christmas Eve, they went up the hill to visit Mark's family for the evening.

We decided to do something a little different but simple for our Christmas Eve dinner: Premarinated Pork Loin, that was absolutely delicious, baked potatoes and homemade rolls. Aftere dinner, I had this idea that it would be super fun for the kids to dress up like Mary and Joseph and a Wise man, angel, shepherd, whatever we could come up with and then the kids could listen to someone read the Nativity out of the New Testament. Well it turned out: that Mary (Millie) was a little frustrated with her costume because it wouldn't stay on her head, and Joseph (Nikolai) didn't really want to dress up. But he did want to sit by Baby Jesus and hold him, so we managed to get a little something around his neck, that did not resemble Joseph at all. Our Wise Man was the only one who really enjoyed his super cool costume! And he loved riding his horse/camel! It was a very "quick" version of the Nativity, read by Tyson, and I think Neal was in and out of the entire thing on the couch, due to sudden jet-lag that had been hitting him every evening for several days. Lots of fun pictures, new pajamas and a few Christmas Carols later, it was off to bed for the kiddos. They were pooped! Except Justin, who happened upon some important secret Santa activity more than once. Justin is a little on the quiet side, so thankfully he didn't spill the beans to Millie. Santa managed to get everything setup for the kids quickly, and he and his helper squeezed in a few boxing rounds on the new Wii (to try it out of course), before scooting out of site so the kids didn't catch them.