advent and christmas eve 2015

I sure love getting ready for Christmas with these three cuties...

We always try to do a lot and there is always a lot to do, but we do our best to remember the reason for the season.  Here are some highlights:
Hanging Christmas lights on our house with Dad...

Making Christmas Cards and Letters to Santa...

And mailing the letters...

Putting out shoes for St. Nicholas...

He brought shepherds and an angel to add to our Playmobil Nativity...

Getting our Christmas Tree...

And, of course, decorating it...

Aunt Nat came to help and Nora got to put on the star...

Many cups of hot cocoa where enjoyed by the fire...

Nora pretended to be a baby in a basket under the tree...

Jimmy was a shepherd in his second grade Christmas pageant...

We used our hands to make tons of shortbread cookies...

When Nano and Nana got in town, we visited the Train Park...

We got to visit Santa on a train...

We rode the little train and saw the lights...

Nora's favorite was the carousel...

We went to get Baabee's GIANT TREE...

It wore out two grandpa's trying to get it put up...

Christmas Eve Mass was quite beautiful and we managed to get a few decent family pictures...

The highlight for Gus was getting to see his best buddy Kolbe after mass...

We were all so happy to see our dear friends the Kerstings...

We went back home to eat our Mexican food dinner of tamales and play some games...

 Nora got in some good Nano loving...

Then the kids all opened their Christmas Eve presents which were special books...

Gus got St. George and the Dragon, Jimmy got The Invention of Hugo Cabret, and Nora got Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka and Their New Skates...

Gus insisted on reading his book right away, but Sith Santa snuck up on them...

Then we moved on to our traditional "The Night Before Christmas."

And then it was off to bed to dream of sugar plums dancing in their heads or something like that... or more likely lie awake for hours because they were just too excited to sleep.