Christmas Eve

Did you have a good Christmas? We sure did. I'm going to do more than one post because of my obsessive-ness with photos. 

Both kids still completely believe in the magic so it was a lot of fun.

We did have one incident on Christmas Eve.

The kids were not quite thrilled with the matching pj's. It all worked out in the end though. That is a tradition I should have started when they were younger!

Can I leave this up all year?! I love these people!

The boys fancied up for Christmas Eve service.

Christmas Eve dinner- shrimp scampi, baked potatoes, broccoli and bread.

Christmas Eve readings of Luke 2 and Twas the night before Christmas.

I love how cute they are in the matching pj's!!!

This one is going to be a framer!

It reminds me of this one below from 2011.

I sure am going to miss "little kid" Christmases when they are over!

Cookies and reindeer food!

All of the presents! (includes gifts for family members) We do spoil these kids at Christmas since we don't really buy them anything much at all during the year. 

A lot of times, it is a lot of stuff, but not necessarily costly things.

I love our Christmas Eve traditions and memories!

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!