Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve... Always magical.  The kids are growing so fast--life feels just like this!  I'm so grateful for every single moment we have together.  
We cut our Christmas tree down every year...but unfortunately in Chile that type of thing isn't done.  People put mangers in their fireplaces.  We don't have a fireplace... but we found some great spots for our manger scenes.  Joe and I were talking about getting a fake tree as we were bringing out all of our decorations.  "Why don't we just have a Christmas forest?"  They asked....hmmm...if that makes you excited, PERFECT!  So that's what we did.  Behind those beautiful blurs is our forest.  

This was our first Christmas with just our little family.  I wanted to make if feel as much like home as possible, because I know we would all be needing it!  So I went to work.  What would make us feel more like home than Nana's Lasagna.  Homemade sauce and meatballs with a bit of a Chilean twist due to the supermercados and their selective choices :)

We pulled out our Christmas plates, used our best table and even set the candles!

Someone was excited

It was yummy.  It was worth it.

The kids could barely stand themselves!  In fact, Jake went ahead and opened up a present that he said "just needed to be opened!"

Kate wrote her letter to Santa and wanted the tree to "Hold it in a Hug."  Can't do that with a real tree!  We had our Christmas Eve celebration and watched a beautiful video of the birth of our Savior and then as I was getting the cookies out, Jake came running in:  "Mom!  We need to put 6 cookies on Santa's plate so he'll be Jolly.  Because we want Santa to be really jolly."
It was a wonderful night.