Our Christmas Eve

We got to go over to see my dad, JoAnn and David on Christmas Eve, to eat cookies and spend some time with them. Also, I was in charge of filling their stockings with goodness, so I brought everything along with us so that I could fill them then.

While we were on our way to their place we saw...

Santa riding his Harley!

He was very friendly! He waved at Michael and I and said "Merry Christmas!" I think he just needed some time to relax before the long night that he had ahead of him.


Here is a picture of Santa in the side mirror, as we passed him.

After seeing my family, and Santa, we went over to Michaels parents house and spent some time there. They told the story of the nativity with the help of the kids, and we just hung out and had fun.

After that we went home to celebrate Christmas together.

This is the pile of gifts that was under our tree. This is where we stored all the gifts for his family, and mine, as well as the gifts for each other. Because I got my wrapping done VERY early this year, we got to enjoy the site of a pile of gifts for most of the holiday season.

Michael and I decided to get each other a pair of pjs and a book for Christmas eve, and three gifts for Christmas. This is one of the gifts he got me. He did very well as wrapping (he was worried my gifts wouldn't look good) but look! He even cut the tisue paper to look like flames coming out of the bag!

I love the pjs that he picked out for me, and the book he got me was "Ender in Exile." I love it. Becaue of how busy Christmas day was, we decided to open all of our gifts to each other on Christmas Eve.

Michael got me a gift card to Best Buy, with which I am going to buy the movie Mulan, and the game Raving Rabbids 2. He also got me the book "The Hunger Games" and he got me an iPod touch! I love all of my gifts :-)

I got him some sea monkeys, a handgun (he loves it. At first he was scared of it, but now that he knows how to shoot, he's more comfortable with it.) and I made him his third gift.

For the Christmas gift I made I painted this box, and cut out over 100 of those little colored cards, and wrote an uplifting or inspirational quote on each of them. The idea was that if he has a bad day, he can read some and it might help to cheer him up. I called them "band-aids for the soul"


I also made him a 14-day walk with Christ. Each day he can open an envelope and it asks some questions, things you can think about throughout the day, and it has some scripture references and a story, poem or song lyric that pertains to the theme of that day. They're all things that will help to understand Christ more, and learn to "walk in his shoes."

My awesome sister in law, Annie, made one for me before. I loved it! And so I wanted to pass it on. I had to find new stories and things, as mine was aimed towards girls :-)

And the last part of the gift I made him was I got this little photo album

I cut out pieces of card-stock paper to fit in each of the slots

And I had everyone in my family and his write up some things that they like about Michael. I then wrote them out on these pages. Everyone has their own page or pages depending on how long theirs is.

I was really proud of this gift. I had a lot of fun putting it all together, and even though my hand will never be the same from all the writing and cutting, it was completely worth it. The best part was to see the look on his face when he opened it :-)

Well that was our Christmas Eve. I'm very behind in my posts, but I figure as long as I catch up before summer I'm good :-)