Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve is full of tradition in my family. Every year, after the Christmas Eve service, we go back to my parent's house and get dinner ready. We always have to have the same exact thing every year: shrimp cocktail, steak, twice baked potatoes, broccoli rice casserole, rolls, and a happy birthday Jesus cake for dessert, all eaten in te formal dining room around candle light.

 

Well, things got a little crazy this year...

 

About a week ago, both of my parents came down with the flu. My dad got better pretty quickly, but my mom also had a sinus infection along with it and her illness lingered forever! We thought she would definitely be better for Christmas Eve, but about 2 hours before Michael, Bryson and I were going to leave for Christmas Eve service, my mom called saying her fever came back and we couldn't do it at their house. It was going to be at our house instead! We had an hour and a half to make our home "christmas eve worthy" all the while getting ready for church. Thankfully, B was napping so we could run around like crazy cleaning and getting things and set up!

 

We tried to wake up Bryson from his nap, but he was NOT having it. After a while, Michael just carried him to the car and we were going to change him in the parking lot. See... NOT a happy camper!! :(

 

Fortunately, he perked up when we told him we would get to sing "Away in a manger" at church in a few minutes. I kid you not, he/we have sung that song over 3,000 times in the last couple weeks.

This was his first time in "big church" since last Christmas Eve, so we talked about all the rules we had to obey: sitting in our chair, whispering, etc. He did GREAT!!

He loved getting to go up and listen to the Christmas story of stage with all the kids! Even though there were over a hundred kids up there, he (true to form) ended up squeezing his way all the way up the stairs closer to the book :)

 

He loved standing with Grandma and Papa and "singing" all the other songs, but his favorite things was lighting the candle!

 

There's something so perfect and pure about this picture that I just adore.

 

Afterwards, we went back to our house and met the rest of the family to start getting things ready for dinner. Everyone chipped in and helped. It was so weird not having my mom there; we really missed her. But, Brandon was really great at sending her minute by minute pictures and videos to keep her up to speed :)

 

 

 

 

I had started having some pretty intense pain in my right side (again) but tried to push through it while we were making dinner. I actually had also started timing my Braxton Hicks contractions.

 

We had a lovely and delicious candle lit dinner. :)

 

The pain in my side was so intense and the contractions were coming every 10 minutes, so my dad suggested I go call my doctor. The on call Dr told me the same thing as last time- most likely just muscle pain, so just lay down on a heating pad, drink lots of water and take some Tylenol and if it's not better in an hour, go to the hospital. I was pretty much freaking out on the inside. :/

 

We went ahead and went on with our nightly traditions. We sang Happy Birthday to Jesus, read the Christmas story, sang some songs (Away in a Manger was requested about 8 times! :)) and then opened each others gifts. 

 

 

 

 

 

After an hour or two, I started to feel a little better, but it was still a pretty crazy night! We hated that my mom was at home by herself on Christmas Eve, we missed her like crazy. But, all in all, it was a nice night! Totally not what we expected, but nice non-the-less :)

 

Then, off to bed to wait for Santa to come!!

Merry Christmas Eve!!