Christmas Eve 2009 Part 1

This Christmas was a little harried for me, usually I am well able to get everything ready and we are completely relaxed by Christmas Eve. Not to make it sound like it was a bad Christmas, on the contrary, we had a great Christmas, in Cole's words, "the best Christmas ever!". The main glitch was that on the Monday after Kaleigh's Birthday (her birthday was the 7th-but we celebrated the Sunday before on the 6th) Carl came down with the 24 hour flu! That is the day we usually reserve for buying the Christmas tree, getting down decorations and getting the house lights up. Well, since Carl was flat on his back and I don't really like doing the tree by myself, we ended up waiting until the next Monday to do everything. This one week set back started a domino effect of me being off on everything! But enough about that, on Christmas Eve day Carl had to work and we didn't really know what time he would be home and since his family was coming for dinner (Grandma and Carl work together to make Aebelskivers) we were trying to come up with a time that would work for everyone. We agreed on 4pm and so that morning I set to work cleaning the house. The kids were a bit tired from staying up a couple of nights a little later than usual, so were not too happy about helping me clean. Kaleigh especially, she actually had a bit of a poutfest and I sent her to her room! Cole was a little more industrious and helped out quite a bit. Later, after feeling sorry for herself and then later feeling just sorry, Kaleigh came out, and started helping by making the spinach dip and breaking up the bread to go with it. At about 2:00 I started wrapping presents. Yup. I hadn't even started yet! I was a little rushed and it didn't help that I was very clutzy so I cut myself on the wrapping paper and banged my knuckles a few too many times. Then people started coming and I was still in my grubbies so I quickly got dressed. Luckily, my children are good greeters! : )So everyone was there by 4pm (thankfully including Carl, he was able to leave work at 3:30pm) and Carl's Mom and he started the cookin'. Thankfully that was when I was able to make the cookie "Teller" (plates) for the Christmas Eve celebration! It was a lot of work but I was pretty relaxed by then and I was making good time! I had 13 plates to fill with cookies and chocolates! Then we all sat down to eat, gave thanks for the food and for our Savior, the reason for the season! We ate heartily and had some fine conversation! Once dinner was done, we did a little clean up and the guys and kids went for a drive to see the lights. At that point I did what I had to do to get ready for our celebration. We were ready pretty quickly and the group came back to a beautiful candlelit room with packages piled in each persons place. The plates of cookies are the place settings for where your presents are located.