Christmas Eve...Two and a Half Months Late

I know it's way after the fact, but I still wanted to add what we did for Christmas Eve this year cause it was a first. This year was the first year we tried to do our own thing, at our own place, the day of. We decided to follow a Hatch family tradition, which is making a big meal of just finger foods/appetizers. Yum! 

 We felt lucky because we had my parents and my little brother for company, so we had a good group for our meal. If I am remembering right, we had pigs in a blanket, a veggie tray with dip, a fruit tray with dip, a 7 layer chip dip with chips, homemade bagel chips with chicken salad, and...I think there was one more thing but I can't remember now. Obviously because it didn't make it onto the table, we had to bring it over separately? Anyway everything was delicious. :)

We next sang a few different Christmas hymns, and just got on the lds.org website where the hymns are and used that as our accompaniment.


Then came our scripture reading of the Christmas story. I really liked the idea of acting out the nativity story, but I wanted to do it in a way that Jori might be able to understand it a bit. I was afraid if we just dressed up it'd be way over her head. Plus we had nothing to dress up in. So our solution? Fisher Price Little People! Thanks to Jotham and Jamie, we have a Little People nativity already, so it was just a matter of adding a few more to fill in whatever rolls were missing.

Then each of us 'played' a part, except Sam who narrated (read the scriptures of) the whole thing. 

 I think my dad was in charge of the inn keepers,

 Dave was in charge of the shepherds,

 My mom was the angel coming down,

 And...I was the three wise men? Maybe. I'm forgetting now. But Sam would read and then we'd have the little people say something applicable.

Jori thought it was great. Or so I'm telling myself. I'm still not sure if she got it, but we tried hard and felt the Spirit/had a good time doing it. So I'm calling it a win. 

 Afterwards, we kept up a Christensen tradition, which is ending the evening with my mom's famous homemade eggnog and orange rolls. Yum!

 I am so beautiful. (blegh...I wouldn't add this but it's the only evidence I have that Atticus and I were there!)

 Oh wait! I'm forgetting. After THAT, we had Jori and Atticus receive a pair of Christmas jammies each. Jori's came with a mask too. Awesome.

All in all, a wonderful evening!