Christmas Eve

 At last, it was Christmas eve! It rained all morning, so we stayed inside and played games.

Late in the afternoon the rain stopped, and it was quite warm so we went down to the creek and pond to check out the flooding.

Meanwhile, Zac worked on preparing a delicious dinner. We decided to do the Christmas feast on Christmas eve since there was nothing else to do today (and tomorrow there will be new things to assemble and play with!). We had turkey with homemade gravy, green beans, pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce and instant mashed potatoes and stuffing. Everything was tasty and perfect.

After supper, our neighbor Linda brought us some gingerbread cookies and beautiful homemade towel she weaved. I'd been kind of bummed this Christmas, not having any holiday festivities outside of our immediate family, but a surprising number of people surprised us by dropping off small gifts. Amy came by to give me a book, Natasha brought us a popcorn popper for the fire, Kim brought us cookies, Kelly gave us a book of pictures of the kids and a colorful trivet from Trader Joes, a student brought a bag of candy and a homemade fitted potholder I assume his mom made (that is perfect for our bowl of baked beans I bring to our campfire cookouts with Jess).

When it got dark after supper, we went for a night walk/hoverboard/bike/ride around the neighborhood to look at lights since it was still so warm out. Back at home, we had bedtime snacks and watched A Christmas Story. I read the traditional "Night Before Christmas" book.

Prompted by the movie, Simon had, at the last minute, realized he'd never made a Christmas list! I had told the kids several times weeks ago to make their lists, but neither ever did, and instead would randomly mention things they wanted, even just a day or two before Christmas! Alice doesn't believe in Santa anymore, and I was hoping Simon wouldn't either, since we barely talk about it, but a magical gift-giver is hard to give up. 

Luckily, we'd already gotten him lots of lures and a pocket knife and something that was sort of like a slingshot. He already has a stapler and tape, but they were taken away at some point because he got staples and tape everywhere. I got them out of hiding and put them back on the art table. The little doll is a weird idea he got from a YouTube video where they fish with a doll. He wanted it to catch Alice (the cow) with it. Needless to say, no doll for Simon.