Christmas Eve 2012

Christmas Eve this year was a little more hectic than I had expected. I must say it was totally different than the past two years, for a few reasons. In 2010, Christmas Eve, the girls were 24 hours old and I was confined to a hospital bed, unable to do anything...and hadn't even seen my babies yet...a day I would love to forget. Last year, Tammy and I went to the airport to surprise Megan. 

Every year of my life up until 2010, my grandma has a huge open house for Christmas Eve...for like 50 years. It used to be a hug party that went all night and everyone in the town came. Of course it has diminished to just family over the years as she has gotten older, but it was what I looked forward to each and every year. I got to see my cousins, have an awesome meal and celebrate with everyone until the wee hours of the morning. But, my grandma got older and it got too hard for her to get everything together for our growing family, which I don't blame her, it was a lot of preparing and cleaning!

So this year, my aunt took over preparing a wonderful meal and hosting everyone. It was soooo nice. The food was amazing, just thinking about it now makes my mouth water. 

But first I want to recap before we met up with our family that evening. Early on Christmas Eve, I met my mom nearby for a sonogram to see the little bean and all was well. The appointment took a lot longer than we expected and by the time I had arrived back home it was seriously time to take showers and get everything ready to head down the road an hour to my aunts house. So, Tim and I took showers and got dressed and when we looked out the window, all we saw was a major snow storm. The forecast was for a quick, brief snow shower possible, not four inches of snow in less than a few hours! We had a bunch of errands to run around town before even leaving, so we rushed and got the girls ready and headed out the door with our hundreds of bags and got going. My sister decided last minute that it was too bad for her to drive so she wanted us to give her a ride, and that was fine since she only lives five minutes away, but getting across town was a horrible mess. There were accidents and back-ups everywhere. By the time we were getting ready to get on the highway, we should have already been at my aunt's house...so it was dinnertime for the girls. It was seriously a freakin' mess everywhere and there was only one lane down the highway. 

So all of us and a million and one things are packed into the car, headed down in the dark snowstorm, and the big girls start getting cranky {plus they had bad colds}, Emily is extremely mad screaming at the top of her lungs and as each moment goes by I keep getting more and more nauseous because I am so darn hungry. It took over an hour to down to my aunt's house.

All I can say, is that it was a lovely ride down. When we finally arrived I had to seriously collect myself because I was so upset, flustered, mad, ect. Not the joyous holiday evening I expected!

But once we got in and the girls got busy playing with everyone and I shoveled food in my mouth {which proved to be a very, very bad idea about 30 minutes later} all was much better. Like I said, the dinner was delicious and it was exactly what I needed. The girls ate like they have never eaten before and behaved pretty well, I must say.

Maddy and Grandpa playing

You can totally tell Claire isn't feeling well.

The big girls loved the freedom to go up and down the stairs as many times as they wanted.

Then we changed them into their Christmas jammies and they were much happier...plus they looked so darn cute!

Claire and Grandma

All and all it was a great Christmas Eve spent with some great family. The girls passed out on the way home and it was a much more relaxed and quiet ride back home, AMEN!