Christmas Eve

Before Church On Sunday I took pictures of the girls in their Christmas dresses.  Sunday was a wonderful sacrament meeting.  There was lots of music and it was just great.  I enjoyed it a lot and the girls (namely Emery) were on their "A" game behavior.  I mean for an almost two year old she was a rock star that day.  These pictures are the best I could get with a very compliant six year old and a very non-compliant twenty-three month old.  

Paiglee just grabbed her hand and I caught this cute moment of Emery looking at their hands.  It is to sweet for me.  I seriously love these girls to pieces.

Monday I woke to snow falling on our street and it felt so Christmasy. I was so excited for Christmas to get here.  I had lots to get done and planned for the day.  I started my day with making sugar cookies with Paiglee.  It is Daryl's Mom's recipe and it is a good one (no sharing though).  It took a while, and at one point she said she was done I told her "no, I need you to help finish."  She was great at dumping the ingredients in to make the dough and I let her roll some it out once it became more manageable.  She cut out the shapes and helped pull the dough away from the shapes so I could scoop them and put them on the cookie sheet.  At one point she said "this takes a long time" to which I told her "yep, making cookies like this takes a lot of effort, now you know why I don't make them often."  Once all the dough was cut out I baked them and cleaned up.  I made the icing while they cooled.  Then I had everyone come help decorate.  I thought I had Christmas sprinkles, I thought wrong.  So I made do with what we had.  This was the first time I let Paiglee spread frosting on the cookies, I never wanted the mess before.  I am an anti-mess mom, something about it gives me anxiety.  I am working on it, don't judge.  But she did great and the only hitch we ran into was her licking her fingers while touching the cookies.  I explained to her we don't lick fingers while prepping food that other will eat.  I had her wipe the frosting she would get on her hand on a rag, it must have been hard for her to let that frosting go un-licked.  Daryl even jumped in to help frost cookies, mostly so we could leave for lunch.

Emery doing her share of helping with the frosting of the cookies.

Her job wasn't so hard 

Look how hard Paiglee was working

We have a ton of cookies now, we will be sending them to work with D once school is back in.

We decided to head to Taco Bell for lunch since I was baking all day and had to do dinner.  I didn't want to make a mess just for lunch.  So we thought we would invite our friends the Mikesell's to join us on our Taco endeavor.  It was a good time we hadn't seen them much because of how busy the month has been and everyone working all the time.  The break from normal schedules was much enjoyed.  Then after lunch I had to go pick a few things up from Home Depot and get home to finish my baking.  I literally spent my whole day in the kitchen except for this little outing.

When we arrived home the girls wanted to play in the new snow that had fallen.  We let them get their snow gear on and go to the backyard to play in the snow.  I had to get started on making cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning breakfast.  Also this recipe is from Daryl's mom who got it from Daryl's Grandma Michael (no sharing, sorry).  They are the best cinnamon rolls and I am not much for cinnamon rolls, but these are perfect. I also had Christmas tunes playing in the background.  As I was making the cinnamon rolls I was also trying to clean up the kitchen Dinning area.  After a good hour in the snow Emery was forced inside to take a nap.  Paiglee was left to play a lone until her friend across the street was able to come play.  Daryl went out with her to keep her company.  Paiglee came in while I was making cinnamon rolls and told me she needed a hat and gloves because she and Dad were making a snowman.  I looked and they were doing a big one.  It turned out super cute and they had to rebuild it at one point because it wasn't strong enough to hold all the stuff that was added to it.  Paiglee's friend showed up and she played forever with her outside.  Daryl ended up making hot cocoa for them to drink outside.  It was funny they were sitting on the deck with their warm cocoa huddled around it.  I wish I had a picture of them.  I finished the cinnamon rolls and Paiglee and her friend came in for a bit to play before dinner.

The start of the snowman it fell a part after this, and they rebuilt it.

Paiglee is not wearing sunglasses her glasses are transition lenses (not my favorite, but make life easier for her).

The finished product, I loved it!  They even used a real carrot nose.  I don't want it to warm up because it will melt.  I can see it from my front door and I love walking by and seeing it there just chilling in my front yard. Get it chilling, I make myself laugh.

After I made cinnamon rolls I took a quick break to clean the floor and kitchen and get started on our Christmas Eve nacho dinner.  It was a simple dinner but it is one of my favorite Christmas traditions from growing up.  Paiglee's friend headed home and then shortly after we sat down for our nacho dinner.  The girls loved it because it was chips and salsa and nacho cheese for them.  I added green onions this year to the fixings and that made my nachos for me.  Daryl bathed the girls and I cleaned up the mess in the kitchen for the fourth time that day.  Then I did the girls hair and we sat down had sugar cookies and listened to Daryl read Luke 2 (about Christ's birth).  Then we watched a little movie clip of The Nativity and talked about Christmas and then watched Shrek the Halls and cuddled together and relaxed.

Right before we sat down to eat.

My nachos it was yummy!

The girls began to get too excited so it was bed time for them.  Plus I still had preparations to get done for Christmas, and Santa had asked Daryl to be his helper Elf this year so he had some work to do as well.  Daryl had a night full of cursing the assembly of a certain toy that Emery would be given and it made for a long night.  I had to shower and get the cream cheese frosting for the cinnamon rolls ready.  Plus I had to finish some dishes.  I had to wrap a few gifts and get all things ready for Santa.  It was a late night for us and I couldn't get tired when it was time for bed.  But some how I did manage to sleep and it was short lived.

I snuck down stairs after Santa came and took a picture of the goods before the girls destroyed it.

I enjoyed this day very much!  The baking and the time with family and friends it made the day special and just warm and comforting.  There were no melt downs that I can recall and the day was perfect like story book perfect except better since it was real life.  I loved it! If I do recall as well, Daryl who hates the Holidays also mentioned how great the day was.  Merry Christmas and God bless!