christmas eve

So I decided that on Christmas Eve that I would brave it and take the girls to our church service all by myself without childcare.

BIG MISTAKE.  BIG.  HUGE.

I was poorly outnumbered.  Emma would have done great.  She was belting out the Christmas carols.  Ava, however, was extremely bored.  The bag of goodies that I brought was all used up after the first song.  Then, Ava thought that if Daddy was on stage surely she should be too.  She started yelling and pointing at Daddy while he was trying to talk.  

So after 15 minutes into the service we took the walk of shame out into the hall where we spent the rest of the service with all the other embarrassed parents whose children could not handle being quiet.  And yes, just because we are in ministry does not mean that we have some secret formula for making our children behave.  In fact, I would even venture that our children act worse than others.

Note to self... childcare is a must at the Christmas Eve service.

After the torture, we headed to a festive Christmas Eve dinner at Outback Steakhouse.  I was so not up for cooking dinner when I was going to be busy in the kitchen on Christmas Day.

At home we let the girls open up some of the games we got them and we had game night.  Well, we attempted to have game night.  Emma was really stressed out about the game Gone Fishin'. She couldn't catch a fish and so the meltdown began.

We made some cookies for Santa.  Actually, we were so tired the cookies didn't even make it to a plate for Santa.  We headed to bed with them still stuck to the pan.

Emma opening up her present.

Ava with her game, Gone Fishing

The attempt to catch fish...

Enjoying some snickerdoodle cookies