I was not looking forward to this Christmas Eve because we had no family with us. Jared’s family is now doing their own thing and my family we just saw less than a month ago, so they aren’t coming. I was a little depressed about the whole thing until My Love said how excited he was to be together alone this year. I asked him what he planned on doing and he said play games and watch Elf. He looked up a bunch of games for us to play together and rented Elf. His enthusiasm really got me excited for my first Christmas Eve alone with no family. We did spend last Christmas Eve alone but not because we hadn’t planned for family to come, but because our kids were terribly sick. So, this is very different.
We started our night with the talent show for a gift.
Esher played a song on his guitar.
Paris made a bow out of duck-tape
And Tristan sang a beautiful song.
The gift is always PJ’s and they get so excited about it every year.
We all took a picture with our new Pj’s on.
Paris and Esher made gifts for us.
Esher was so cute we have no idea why it says Have fun camping, but we love it!
Paris brought back some sand from Cancun so she made this art box out of the sand to remind us of the beautiful ocean, the one thing I constantly miss from California, and this awesome I love you sign traced with the sand. i I LOVE HER CREATIVITY!
Okay, it was time for the games.
The first game was really cool unfortunate, I don’t have a single picture of the before box. This is what we did. We wrapped boxes inside bigger boxes and the smallest one had money in it…$10. With some oven-mitten on they had to try and unwrap each box before anyone else did. They would switch to the next person when that person would roll a six on the dice. Sometimes the person unwrapping would have a lot of time and other times they would only have enough time to put on the mittens. My Love recorded the whole thing. It was so much fun! The kids were laughing and running back and forth.
The winner of this game was PARIS.
The next game had to do with chocolate kisses. 
Here they are ready to go.
Sebastian was hoping one of them would drop a kiss just for him. He kept walking back and forth behind them-such a funny dog.
Esher was so excited when he finally finished but the winner was actually Tristan. The prize this time was a toy from the dollar store.
Our final game was the Santa Beard Game. They each had a turn putting Vaseline on their face and then dipping their face into a bowl full of cotton ball. Whoever had the most cotton balls on their face at the end of 30 seconds would win.
Tristan ended up with 18.
Esher got 22.
Some fell off before I took the picture.
And Paris got 29.
At this point my poor boy started crying because he didn’t win a single thing. We gave him a prize anyway but he was really hoping to win one.
It was time to watch ELF (our new Christams movie tradition) with lots of treats. My Love and I haven’t seen it in years. IT WAS SO SO STINKIN’ FUNNY!!! My Love was laughing out loud so many times-one of my favorite thing he does!!!
Now I’m so excited to build on this for next year and make next year even better!
I guess it isn’t all that bad being alone fro Christmas with no extended family. It was actually A LOT of fun. I guess when you have the most wonderful immediate family everything is fun-can’t believe I ever doubted it!!!!
CAN’T WAIT FOR NEXT YEAR!!!!!
