Christmas Eve

We celebrated Christmas Eve at my parent's house. We had planned to go to church but just could not make it in time with naps and dinner. Our family tradition has been to open ALL of our presents on Christmas Eve. You can see from the pile around the tree that it was a good thing we did not go to church or we would not have had time to open them all. You can't even see in the picture all of the presents that were just to and from the members of our family of 4. We have to take an annual photo in front of the Christmas tree. It is so hard to get a good photo with a baby and a preschooler, especially one who likes to make silly faces so we have a silly picture.
Will, Jaime and Sophia did a better job of posing in front of the tree.
Nana and Pops wanted a photo with the girls. Caroline was eating and could not pose.
Again, it is so hard to get a good photo of kids at this age. Katherine is sticking out her tongue and Sophia is hiding her face.
Katherine had a great time. Her job was to deliver the presents to the correct person. She was so cute as she would announce whose present it was. She helped every person open every gift so she is in most of the pictures.
Nana gave all three girls princess slippers. Katherine wore them nonstop for the rest of the holiday. I made Sophia a tutu. She was pretty excited about it and decided to wear it on her head.
I received a lot of jewelry to go with a few new outfits I have.Katherine received a "puter". In the first photo she was not 100% sure what it was and wanted daddy to get it out of the box. In the second photo she is excited because she realizes she has a "puter" of her own.

Sophia received the same computer last weekend and so she showed Katherine how to work it.
Will received a remote control helicopter along with some accessories.
Caroline made a plate with her footprints on it to match the one that Katherine made for her first Christmas.
Sophia also received an art box full of goodies.
Jaime requested sweatshirts so Will made her a "super mommy" sweatshirt. We all agreed that this would be great to wear around the house but a little dorky to wear in public.

It was a fun evening until bed time. Our family decided to spend the night at Nana and Pops' house even though we only live 15 minutes away. Katherine has spent the night over there a few times but never with us there as well. We put her to bed pretty close to her normal bedtime but we could not get her to go to sleep. Sam stayed with her for over an hour and then I was with her for awhile. We did not want her to cry and wake up Sophia and we could not leave her in the room because she could open the door and come out on her own.

Over and over she told us that she was not sleepy. She used every stall tactic ever. She wanted water. She needed to go to the bathroom. She told me she was hot. She said she needed her toenails cut. She said she was scared. At midnight we finally decided that she and Sam would go back to our house because none of us were sleeping. I have no idea how she was able to stay awake but I think that the fact that we were all in the same room together kept her awake. She fell asleep in the car on the way home and slept through the night with no problem. It made for a very frustrating Christmas night and a delayed Christmas morning. If she were older I would say that she was just too excited about Santa to fall asleep. All I can think of is that she was excited about all of us being at Nana's house and maybe her allergy medicine kept her up.