Christmas Eve

 Christmas time came fast and furious this year, which I found rather surprising as this year has been dragging on with complications and suddenly it wraps up in warp speed.  I'm both not ready and fully ready for this year to end.  In any case, we are doing our best to close this year out best we can.  

This Christmas Eve, we had planned to attend a candlelight service.  We haven't been able to have a candlelight service in a few years and we were all pretty happy to have the opportunity, but alas, it was not meant to be.  We structured our day around that service and when it came right down to it, temperatures plummeted, snow started falling and ice was accumulating so the service was canceled.  We were literally all dressed up with nowhere to go as we received the cancellation notice as we were headed out to the car.  

Sad, but not ready to call the evening a bust, we decided to use our dressier clothes to take photos in and we got a few good shots.  

We decided not to let all of the practice the little kids put into their song, so they sang for us.

The children were supposed to sing Joy to the World on stage--they were happy to at least sing it for us since they memorized the entire thing and they sounded great! 

 Jozsef was supposed to read scripture on stage, so he read the verses to us at dinner.  Dinner was pre-made and an easy set up as we expected to come home and eat a bit late, so we set the table quickly and ate all dressed up, just for kicks.  :-)  

After dinner, we played the saran wrap ball game (a newer tradition that we've all really begun to anticipate) 

and then we opened our traditional one gift before watching a movie by firelight and cozying up for the night, cookies waiting for Santa courtesy of Hannah and Nikolas who had baked earlier in the day.

Just in case you were wondering, Hannah does not regularly wear glasses--these are the blue light glasses she was wearing while watching the movie

We missed the service, but we certainly did not miss out on quality time and Christmas spirit.  :-)