Christmas Eve, Sparacino style

Christmas Eve was very laid back for our family.  

We had hoped to look at Christmas lights on the 23rd, but we had a little winter weather and a veterinary trip for one of our cats.  

We still haven't been to look at any!  That's the way this year has been though- no stressing out about traditions.

We watched Elf during the day and then got ready for our Christmas Eve service at church.

I never went to any church growing up that had services on Christmas Eve and I have just fallen in love with this new tradition.  It is so fitting to go and be in God's house to sing carols on the eve before His birthday celebration.

Afterwards, we headed home to have our traditional fancy seafood dinner.

We have seafood to observe the Italian tradition of the Feast of the Seven Fishes as part of our family's Italian heritage.

We always eat on our Christmas dishes by candlelight.

The past few years, we have had shrimp scampi. This year we had that along with mashed potatoes, asparagus, fancy green beans and pecan pie.

We always read 'Twas the Night before Christmas and we read the story of Jesus' birth from Luke chapter 2.

This year, we failed to make sugar or spritz cookies for Santa, but never fear!

I pulled out some freezer cookie dough and let the kiddos make cookies for Santa all by themselves!

They colored him some ornaments and wrote him a letter and then FINALLY went to bed!

It was a sweet, fun Christmas Eve!