christmas eve

two years ago we received this santa head from an anonymous giver. we have had a blast with it for the past few christmas seasons and thought it might be time to anonymously leave it on the doorstep of someone else's family, so they might enjoy it too. i still havent made up my mind about gifting it... but we have a year to make that decision ;) anyways, if this was our last year with santa, we wanted to make it count and include him in all our festivities. here are a few of our christmas activities through out the month of december:

buying our tree

 watching the grinch

 hanging christmas lights

eating sugar cookies

(thanks leishmans!)

doorbell ditching a christmas ham

 and our christmas eve morning run to bennet's donuts

this is our third year going to bennet's on christmas eve morning and each year chris wants to take a picture in front of the tree. i guess its good to have a puffy-eyed, sleepyhead family picture every once in a while, right?!

alli, jacob, and louie joined us this year and we found a great park near by to enjoy our donut feast

 later that morning the kids sprinkled their reindeer food in the yard

then we headed over to bo and larissa's to frost sugar cookie houses, our tradition rather than gingerbread houses. do people actually eat gingerbread houses??? this seems to be a much tastier way to enjoy a house.

ellie loves to ride on the rope swing at their house.

christmas eve, we headed over to mom and pop browne's for the brower family tradition of spaghetti dinner. chris even made me a small batch of homemade fettuccine alfredo that was divine. we were so blessed to have daddy home on christmas eve and christmas day. it made the holiday perfect. next up, christmas day!