the rest of the story...

Our pre-Christmas festivities eventually lead into Christmas Eve. After what is becoming our traditional get together with mom, Keith, Ash and her fam and sometimes my stepbrother Chris during the day on Christmas Eve, we settled in for our usual Christmas cookie making. In true engineer fashion, Jason has perfected the sugar cookie dough recipe and as usual, a good time was had by all. We decided to switch things up a little this year and go to mass on Christmas eve since getting there at 10 on Christmas morning has nearly killed us in the past. Since our kids are night owls to begin with, we opted for the less crowded 10 pm mass. And less crowded it was indeed, due the blizzard that was raging as we made our way there and back. By the time we headed home, Jason had to make his best guess where at where to drive But is was worth it, the church was so beautiful and peaceful. We stopped in front of the nativity and Ryan quickly pointed out “Baby”. People thought is was so special and it was, I just didn’t tell them he gets excited at the site of any baby (or dog for that matter). Grant was actually pretty tired. Because we were there early we started a quiet game of Eye Spy. Grant’s turn brought “I spy with my little eye, something green and pointy”, Um, could it be the big Christmas tree, Grant? After making it home, we were all surprised to find that Santa had actually come while we were at church. You can see in one of the pictures that Kyle was so excited he didn’t even take off his hat before tearing into his stocking. It was very fun, Kyle was having serious doubts about Santa at the beginning of the season, but this, seeing the presents appear when he knew that Mom and Dad had been at church with him put him firmly back on team Santa, for at least one more year. If I could caption the photos with the time they were taken, it would be pretty scary. Ryan, who never so much as yawned during church, stayed up until midnight, and Grant and Kyle caught their second wind and didn’t lay down until 2am. Jason and I crashed not long after, so thankful for our beautiful family and the fact that we didn’t have to get up the our do anything the next day.