Christmas Eve

What's the absolute best way to start the day of Christmas Eve? Celebrating my mom's birthday at Ihop, of course! This has become a tradition that we all look forward to, and, even though having your birthday on December 24th may not be ideal, at least we can still have fun! I didn't end up with great pictures, but I do have pictures of great people :) And since I can't have a post without a bajillion pictures, here are a few pics from breakfast. (But why don't I even have a picture of my beautiful mom??)



After breakfast Kevin suggested we venture out to the mall. What? Yeah, I know. We didn't have anything we had to buy but decided to spend some time enjoying the last day of the mad rush of holiday shoppers. We weren't there long but I did leave with a little bracelet! On our way home I asked Rylan if we should make some cookies for Santa. "Nah, let's just make some for ourselves" was his response. I decided Santa had a big breakfast and so we didn't really need cookies at our house anyways :)
We lounged around for the afternoon and then headed to my mom's for some soup, birthday cake and ice cream. Tami and I both thought it was silly that the birthday girl was making her own dinner and birthday cake, but she insisted. Well, Okay!

I love the partially eaten cake :)

Can this boy get any sillier?

Home we went to get ready for Santa. We started getting the boys in bed and then I realized they didn't open their Christmas Eve gift! When Ry was a baby I read an interview with an author (it was a male author, and one that I like, but I don't remember who!) and he said one of his favorite Christmas traditions growing up (and one he's done with his own kids) is to open a book on Christmas Eve. I thought that was kinda fun so we've enjoyed it for the last few years. Then we can read those new books before bed! This year Rylan got 'Knuffle Bunny Free'. I ordered it from Scholastic before reading it, and it's a little bit grown up for him. But he was very excited and we've read it over and over. We love Knuffle Bunny!



Rylan was so scared of Santa coming to our house that he had a hard time going to sleep. He was worried Santa was going to go into his room and sneak around our house. Here are a couple things he said:
Ry: "Mom, if you see Santa, will you make sure he doesn't come into my room?"
And to Kev...
Ry: "If I have a bad dream and come into your room, what will Santa do to me?"
I don't know where he got this fear but it made me a little sad. Hopefully next year he will be excited for Santa to come and it will be from all the excitement, rather than fear, that will keep him awake!