The EVES

At our house we have a little celebrator! Emmrey will look for any reason to celebrate or count down an occasion. Yes it may be overzealous but it's also charming;) We get a daily briefing of not only how many days until Christmas and Christmas Eve, but also how many days until the Eve of Christmas Eve. On the "Eve of Eve" we cleaned the church and then treated the girls to Starbucks {Bailee was at the club}

 On the official Eve of Christmas, we started the day with a hike. It has become tradition since moving to Colorado that Mark and I go for a hike in the morning. We have been lucky enough to have good weather those years. We hiked at Gateway Natural Area up Poudre Canyon. Most of the initial climb was in the shade but once we got to the top the sun felt so good! We sat there basking for a while and were surprised it was warm enough to have flies buzzing around.

When we returned we spent the rest of the day working on our puzzle ...
Bailee was the most diligent this year.

Later in the afternoon we made our Gingerbread Houses. This year they were not authentic as they were really Graham Cracker houses. I think we need to do the real thing next year cause I love that smell of baking gingerbread.

We did pull out the hair dryer but I don't know that we really needed it. That frosting hardened up pretty well on its own

The two oldest struggled a bit with their design. One tends to over think it and the other tries to hurry and gets frustrated if it doesn't work out just right;) Emmrey just throws all the candy she can on hers and eats equally as much. The finished masterpieces .... complete with a Tee-pee, buffalo, campfire and river as well as an outhouse with a little "extra detail" inside

After eating and hitting the hard stuff .... {straight up Nog}, we could take Emmrey's pleading to open her gift {to us} no longer. She had made each of us these cute little yarn hats at school. She wanted them opened because they are ornaments for the tree. She was so darn excited about those!

She had also made us these cute cards. I love her messages ... especially the "PS Bailee I don't want you to go to College".

 I think most kids made one or maybe two of the hats. Our Emmrey took the prize for making the most in the entire 4th grade .... 8 hats people! This wasn't all of them.

The girls opened their gift from us. You guessed it! PJ's and no book this year but the next three seasons of Little House. Bailee started with this love many years ago and now has her sisters loving it too. We finished our book The Best Christmas Pageant and then decided to watch the movie, tracked Santa for a bit. set out stockings and a treat and called it a night after reading the Christmas Story on Bailee's bed (since she was already in it;)