Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve Andrew made tamales and fried green chili burritos, a tradition carried over from his growing up years. It's a time intensive project and a dish intensive project and somehow years ago I made the deal with Andrew that if he was going to whip up phenomenal feasts like this he would also be the one to clean the kitchen and he has not gone back on that deal! 

(I'm rather fond of one-pot meals, myself, and am very lucky that Andrew does so much of the cooking and kitchen stuff). 

The kids had gone to Grandpa's house for a sleepover, so we had a quiet house to ourselves on Christmas Adam (the day before Christmas Eve). We went out for dinner, wrapped presents, did a little last-minute shopping, and then had a wonderful sleep in...before getting up to wrap tamales. 

Both the kids and Grandpa returned in the early afternoon. We played some games and finished dinner prep. Alexander kept us all abreast of Santa's whereabouts:

Phoebe had a bit of a meltdown when it came time to act out the nativity. She's been playing nativity for about a month now and had been looking forward to getting to be Mary on Christmas Eve...and then she threw a fit and cried about how she didn't want to do the nativity at all and didn't want to be Mary and how her life was just plain awful!

I took her aside and explained that this was the one chance she had to act out the nativity on Christmas Eve this year and that she could be any character she wanted...or she could sit on the side and watch if that's what she truly wanted (but, again, this was the single chance to act out the nativity on Christmas Eve because after this it was bedtime). 

Andrew also spoke with her and made some sort of deal about choosing the baby doll (she chose her Lulla Doll) and then she was able to participate. 

Kind of...

I don't know if her years of not sleeping are catching up to her or what, but she's begun begging to go to bed in the evenings. She just gets so tired. And grumpy.

Makes me want to start up our school day schedule again. 

Anyway, Zoë was the angel (as she has been for the past several years; she was also a wiseman):

Benjamin was a shepherd and a wiseman, Rachel (who we decided looks like Maleficent) was King Herod (her favourite character to play for some reason) and also a shepherd.

Here's Miriam as a shepherd (she was also a wiseman):

Alexander was Joseph (he's busy reading the script here):

Here are the shepherds being "sore afraid":

And here's Mary...

And Joseph patiently awaiting their visitors:

Here are the shepherds, having come to worship the baby Jesus:

Poor Mary wasn't really up for company (she needed rest):

They were both getting a little impatient waiting for the wisemen to show up, honestly:

Here are the wisemen talking to King Herod:

And here they are presenting their gifts:

After the nativity we said goodbye to Grandpa and then I made everyone sing more Christmas songs—the Christmas season is never long enough to get all the singing in that one needs to at Christmas (especially in the states, where the start of the Christmas season is dictated by the end of Thanksgiving). So people called out songs they wanted to sing, Miriam played them on the piano, and Phoebe...pouted...because she wanted to go to bed and not sing.

Here she is not pouting (miraculously):

Rachel and I painstakingly lugged the tree tent to the basement for the kids' Christmas Eve sleepover. Here's Phoebe excited to go to sleep in the tree tent:

And here she is fast asleep, thank goodness!

She's been better about staying in her own bed recently, having been motivated by the promise of another sleepover at Grandpa and Darla's house. 

After Alexander and Phoebe were put to bed, the older kids started watching It's a Wonderful Life and went to bed far too late. When I woke up in the morning and went downstairs to wake up the rest of the kids before Grandpa arrived, Alexander and Phoebe were already up. Alexander was playing some Christmas matching game he'd found online and Phoebe was watching him. 

We've never been the kind of family to get up early on Christmas morning.