Christmas Eve at Pa Dave's

I am finally getting around to documenting the rest of our wonderful Christmas. We spent Christmas Eve at my dad's with most of my mom's family. It's a tradition, and if you've seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding... well, we're not Greek, but we are big and loud. But we love the barely controlled chaos of it all.


Lila was there less than 10 minutes before she managed to dump someones glass of water all over herself, so she spent the first half hour hanging out in only a diaper while her clothes dried. I was just grateful that it was only water so we didn't have to wash and dry the clothes.


Lila with "pa pa". She gets so excited when ever we pull into his driveway and starts to shout "pa pa! pa pa!". And yes that is a Clementine orange in her hand, I made the mistake of setting her chair on the table next to a bowl of them. She thought they were balls and spent the entire time she was eating trying to empty the bowl of them onto her daddy's plate. When we moved them out of reach she started to freak out, but then was fine as long as she had one for each hand.


Awwww, loves for Papa.


Jake right in the middle of the conversation. My kids love when we go visit family, they just have to be in the middle of all the action and talk to everyone.


Evie and Grandma-great! She was fascinated by the sparkly star on my Grandma's sweat shirt, which happens to be the same sweat shirt she has worn every Christmas since I can remember. It is it's own tradition.


Lila with Aunt Kristen and Lizzy. As you can see we managed to get her dressed again. I love how festive everyone looks in all the red!


My dad's Christmas Eve party is all about the food, this year we had roast beef, pork loin, and salmon. Killer Mashed Potatoes, Chinese Chicken Salad, and a smorgasbord of other savory and sweet things. My girls were in heaven, they love to eat and nibble. Jake is getting to the age where he was chomping at the bit to start playing with the cousins, so he had to be coerced into sitting still long enough to eat. Evie didn't stop nibbling all night. But she is always quick to share. Here she was offering Brian a slice of her orange.


After dinner and a suitable period of digestion has passed, Santa Claus comes! This is a favorite childhood tradition of mine. Santa comes and brings us Christmas Eve stockings. These were always filled with cheesy Christmas trinkets and dollar store goodies, but such fun. It was a little strange for me this year because that was something my mom always arranged and I ended up being in charge of it. It was weird to be put in the position of having to decide if this was a tradition we wanted to carry on or not. I am glad we did.


Jake was most excited by a wallet to keep all the business cards he collects in.


Lila and Jake opening their stockings. (Evie had staked out a spot on my cousin Cecily's lap and wasn't giving up that much one on one attention to show me anything...)


Lila got two little board books and a new set of blocks. She loves to stack blocks right now. I love that she is at an age that is so easy to please.


Before we left for the night the kids each got to open one present. From my Uncle Kaleb. Who always gives the coolest presents, the neatest, craziest and noisiest toys he can find. This year for Jake it was a set of electric drums. Yes you read that right. Electric DRUMS. Gee, thanks Kaleb. (Actually they are really pretty cool, and Jake loves them. All the kids love them. Okay, they are pretty fun...)


Evie is very into Snow White right now. Her reaction to this gift, "OHHHHH! It's e'sactly what I wanted for Christmas!!!! Hank you Kayub! Hank you so much!!"


And for Lila a baby laptop. (It makes sense, Kaleb does computers for a living.) It has lights and sounds, bright colors, and my personal favorite a little red mouse that moves. Yup, it has a mouse. Too funny. I also noticed 4 or 5 family members playing with it under the guise of helping Lila figure it out. Proof that lights and sounds will attract children of all ages...


Jake practicing his rock and roll poses while waiting for the drums to be taken out of the box and set up.


Lila saw that people were allowed to hit stuff with these sticks and wasn't about to be left out of that kind of fun. And no she didn't spill another cup of water, she was cutting in her top two teeth and drooling like a maniac. I actually got her a bib that said "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth!" I wish I had a picture of her wearing it, but Brian was in charge of snapping the photos this year and he doesn't think about blogging when he is taking pictures... oh well.


Did I mention that Kaleb is also a drummer? Makes even more sense now, doesn't it. Here he is giving Jake his first lesson on how to properly hold the drumsticks, because technique is everything when you are driving your mother crazy.

Of course after all this fun we still had the biggest surprise of all waiting for us at home. It was a wonderful Christmas for our whole family.