Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve, we all went to Gigi and Papa's house in Winter Haven. We had a big chili bar for dinner, and we had drawn names for gifts. The kids were excited to give their gifts and to see who had drawn their names. When we got there, Tori and Zoe were outside, being all cute, so I had to take their picture. Gigi and Papa have this vibrating machine thing. I'm not sure if or how it works, but the kids sure had fun jiggling and wiggling on it!

The "kid" table! Zoe, Tori, Kelly, Lynsey, Katie, Tia, and Morgan all enjoyed their dinner together.

Jake was being so funny. He'd reach over and pull on Uncle Jon's shirt, until Uncle Jon leaned over. Then Jake would give him a quick head-but. He did it about eight times! He'd just giggle and do it again! Silly boy.

I came inside after dinner and saw Jillian sitting over by the Christmas tree. I thought she was messing with all the presents, and I started to tell her to stop, but Gigi told me that she was actually playing will all the little gingerbread houses that were lined up under the tree. So I let her play. I realized later that she had already scoped out all the presents to see which ones had her or Jake's names on them.

When I was a kid, my sister and I used to always go to Gigi's house and play with her nativity set. We'd rearrange it several times each time we went over to her house. Gigi always let us play with it, even when we broke the head off of one of the wise men. She fixed it and let us keep playing. I can remember doing that for years. I was telling Rick about the nativity set a few days before Christmas Eve, and how Gigi always let us play with it. My heart kind of swelled a little bit when I saw Jillian playing with it too. She was very into it - she was looking all the pieces over very carefully, trying to figure out who was who and where they should stand, getting all the animals in the correct place.

Time to open presents! Uncle Jon asked Jillian if she wanted to help pass out the presents, and she readily agreed. She was so cute bringing presents to each person. I had teased her about being an elf a few days before this, and she kept telling me she was short but she wasn't an elf. So when she started passing out presents, I said, "Jillian, you were just tricking me. You ARE an elf!" She kind of giggled and gave me a secretive smile.

Jillian the red-nosed reindeer!

And Jake the red-nosed reindeer too!
Time to go home and wait for Santa!

I figured they would fall asleep within a few minutes of the drive home. Wrong. They fell asleep about five minutes before we got home. We let Jake go straight to bed, but let Jillian wake up so she could help put out the milk and cookies for Santa (did you know Santa really only likes chocolate milk?) and the carrots and water for the reindeer.