One More Sleep 'Til Christmas

Well, here we finally are - on Christmas Eve. On one hand, it seems like forever ago that we first started plugging in Christmas music and going to see the Pink Pig. On the other hand, it seems like time has flown by. Speaking of flying, guess who's in town?

You'd better not pout, you'd better not cry! Madison did nothing of this sort today, staying on the "nice" list all day long. But it was hard to keep her contained: she was so excited! Today we had two Christmas Eve services at the church, where the kids did their annual Nativity story, and every single one was bouncing-off-the-walls excited, including Madison. Here's a photo of a few of the kids, and Madison too - along with the director:

Hopefully we'll post pictures soon enough of the entire stable. Daddy was backstage for the most part, and Mommy was making sure costumes were ready to go for the entire cast. Madison went out with the other livestock and did very well, just like always. She's pretty used to this now, isn't she? I believe this is her third time as an animal in the Nativity Scene. Someday, she'll get promoted to shepherd or even further down the line: Mary. That's the goal for all the girls, of course. You stick with it and someday you can be Mary, kid!

After services, we went to Nana and Ye-Ye's house for the annual Christmas Eve get together. It was great as always. They have all this food there, and we even open one present a piece. It was fixed tonight: everyone got a pair of socks! But these were special socks - they were Christmas socks, so it's all right. We'll each be sure to wear our Christmas socks tomorrow morning. We sat and talked, and watched television, and ate, and frankly got a little sleepy. In fact, we all turned in a little early: tomorrow is a big day!

We got home and Madison made sure we left cookies out for Santa, and plenty of carrots for the reindeer. Seriously, she put out two carrots per reindeer. She was quite insistent about this: for those of you like me a little slow on math, that's 18 baby carrots on this plate (for eight standard reindeer and one with a glowing nose). Daddy forgot to put milk out, but Madison was pretty quick to remind me. Another new element to Christmas Eve is going out in the front yard and spreading some reindeer trail mix. She made this at school and has been keeping it in her plastic bag for just such an occasion! The other thing she made: the plate that we put the cookies and carrots on. Here it is below, before we put the buffet on top of it:

The chain has only one link on it: one sleep until Christmas. The advent calendar has only one more day to go. We're finally here at Christmas. Everyone is tucked in bed, with visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads. I've got my nightcap on - in fact, I think I hear sleigh bells now. I'd better sneak upstairs! We'll wake up tomorrow and see what's under the tree!