Friday, January 09, 2009

christmas eve

instead of telling you what we did christmas eve, i figured it would be better to show you what we did.  so, here is a picture story of how we spent our christmas eve this year (or, technically it would be last year...). after driving around to see the luminaries we came home to get the girls ready for bed and do last minute preparations before santa came. of course, as we were doing all of this we were tracking santa on the norad santa tracker. this way the girls could make sure they went to bed before he got to our neck of the high desert!

oats

as soon as the girls opened their christmas eve present, of our choosing, (new pj's) and got dressed in said new pj's, lala had to go outside and sprinkle oats for santa's reindeer. she got special oats with sparkles from preschool. the sparkles, if you were wondering, are to help the reindeer find the oats! who knew!?

 

 

writing to santa

while lala was busy sprinkling oats, nani was writing her note to santa.

 

 

reading night before

then daddy read, "twas the night before christmas", while nani put the finishing touches on a homemade gift to put under the tree and lala pondered what she was going to write in her note to santa.

 

 

kawena reading

kawena wasn't interested in the book daddy was reading, so she found her own book (a great book called pinkalicious) to read to lala's pink bear. how appropriate!

 

 

luke2

then, it was time to turn to more spiritual things as we read the account of the birth of christ from luke 2.

 

 

nani note

with the stories read and the notes written, the girls placed a plate of goodies on the fireplace flanked by their notes which both contained very vital questions for santa!

 

 

lala note

i was very impressed with how well lala wrote her letters all by herself. not bad penmanship for a 5 year old!

 

 

girls

and just before sending them off to visions of sugarplums, we snapped a photo of our girls in front of our purple and red christmas tree wearing their new pj's. do they look ready for sleep or what??!

 

and then the adults stayed up WAY too late preparing for christmas morning! why does that always happen?

11 comments:

Siouxsie said...

That looks like a great Christmas. I love all the pictures but especially the one in front of the tree. It's so festive and happy making!

Amanda D said...

Your Christmas Eve sounds a lot like ours! PJ's, the same stories and kids leaving notes for Santa. Cute pictures! Your tree is beautiful!

Bridget said...

Looks very similar to our Christmas eve. We also do the new PJs and we sprinkled the glittery oatmeal for the reindeer.

tutu lady said...

I'm so happy to have shared it all with you. Mahalo.
I hope to have even more fun next month with you all.

jessica said...

We have the very same traditions. Except the jammies...which are adorable by the way. Maya's letter was WAY longer and santa actually wrote back!

Nana said...

What I love about blogs:
I get to know and love your family in a way that just wouldn't have happened otherwise.
You have recorded a Christmas memory for your family that we never did for our kids. I hope you download some of these precious records and don't trust the internet as the sole keeper of this work.
Rhonda

Sarah said...

I love those pjs!

Mandy said...

The girls look so cute in their new jammies. I love new jammies christmas eve. Pinkalicious is a fav in our house too!

Lauren in GA said...

I love your photography!

We track Santa on Norad, too. They love it!

Your husband looks so happy in the scripture picture.

Elizabeth Dimit said...

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I was skimming through the pictures at the top of the blog, wondering why Mahina was conveniently absent! You are so adorable pregnant, and I love the pictuers of the girls in their new PJs. We did pajamas, too, of course. But we only left out baby carrots for the reindeer. I never heard of sparkly oatmeal. I love that idea! I think the reindeer got gypped at our house. :-)

And what beautiful pictures of your new city at Christmastime! We love and miss you guys!

Malia said...

soooo fun!!! And I LOVE the christmas tree shot! So howd those reindeer like the sparkly oats??? Are you sure its not hazardous to their health? Probably not since they're magical creatures that can fly... I bet it actually helps them!