Christmas Eve 2022

What a day!  It's Christmas Eve already, and we just haven't been prepared for this to happen so soon.  The Christmas Production sort of time-traveled us forward a week or two and zap!  We're here already!  We had a big skillet breakfast this morning, and when Maddie awoke, she finished off the advent calendars.  Jingle left her a parting gift, a CD of Christmas music from Taylor Swift.  He had to "swiftly" return to the North Pole.  We were doing a lot of wrapping today, and we had a Christmas movie marathon going too.  It's super cold outside, so no going out there at all, and in fact we stayed in our pajamas for a good long while.  Mom even got me a new pair for Christmas, ones with Jack Skellington on them.  I'll wear these for DAYS.  

Anyway, at about 3pm, it was time to race out the door so we can get a seat at the Free Chapel Christmas Eve service!

 

We made it to the Christmas Eve service tonight, and it was filled to capacity.  There were two services tonight, just so everyone could fit in one or the other, and it was a very nice service.  You can see the candlelight portion of our service, a very special night at the church singing Christmas carols and just being together one more time before the biggest day of the year.  It is still super cold outside - look at the ice out there in the fountains!

The rest of the day was spent setting up for Christmas, and some other traditions we usually get involved in.  For example, the Arochos famous cookie contest, where their family makes cookies, posts the pictures online, and then everyone votes on their favorites.  We usually find the results out after Christmas.

Hint:  the winner this year is the first one, the reindeer, which is Megan's.  Daniel was the panda.  

We thought it would be a fun tradition to once again eat at a Chinese restaurant, but apparently everyone else that went to Free Chapel's service immediately decided that same thing - service at that place was so epically slow.  It was good, but we were there for hours.  We might skip that idea next year, I don't know.

Anyway, we got home and watched a few Christmas specials, but we were definitely busy setting up for tomorrow.  We read and we prayed, and we were just about sleepwalking the rest of the night, falling into bed just at the stroke of midnight, just in time for Santa to come zooming by...swiftly...