Thursday, December 27, 2007

Christmas Eve

We started a tradition a few years ago with the kids. The kids draw each other's names and then whichever name they get, they buy that person a gift. We always go shopping all at once. Half go with Mommy and half go with Daddy depending on which names were drawn and we play hide-+-seek while we shop to avoid the others from seeing. It's so much fun. At home, Mommy helps each of the kids wrap the gifts they bought and then we place them under the tree and Christmas Eve, they open them. This year was so fun--JiaLi knew who everyone had--Mommy usually writes it down to avoid forgetting who has who but JiaLi had it memorized. It was great! JiaLi related gifts were JiaLi had to buy for Danny and Joseph had to buy for JiaLi. The opening was great because JiaLi was excited for everyone's gifts. At the end, I jokingly said, let's all give hugs to those who got us the gift---And they did:) JiaLi was just a little excited;) Our little Joseph was very stressed because we didn't put the cookies out for Santa right away. Mommy began baking cookies for Christmas day at 9 p.m. and had promised to leave some out for Santa. While baking, Joseph came down saying he had a great idea that we could leave a note for Santa so that he would know to eat the cookies and drink the milk. He came down a second time(15 minutes later) all upset because the note wasn't there yet and to say he had another great idea that we could leave 9 carrots for the reindeer. I told him as soon as I was done I would prepare everything. He was still very distressed so I told him to grab a piece of paper and write the note himself. Here is what he wrote. I would have taken a picture of the snack but I thought his note was so sweet. Keep in mind, he doesn't quite get the difference between "and" and "or" just yet--otherwise I'm sure that "or" would read "and". More to come from our Christmas Day:)

3 comments:

LaLa said...

So happy he wrote it himself...too sweet!!! Glad they had a nice hugfest too!

mommy24treasures said...

oh all the hug pics are so sweet!
I love reading everyone's different traditions! Your kids are SOOOO SWEET!

Patty said...

What a wonderful idea for Christmas Eve, and before! And the hugs were so sweet! And the note is adorable.