Christmas 2010 Part Three: The Eve

Christmas Eve was a fun day. Nothing exciting or special happened in the first half of the day, but after naps is a whole nother story. We got the boys up a little early from their naps (poor Finn was the only one still sleeping and he had a hard time waking up) so we could go to church.

Our church here has a special kid's service they do every Christmas Eve. As I said last year, you show up, there are tables of costumes for the kids to dress up in as either shepherds or angels or wise men or stable animals. Then, after the service starts, the kids gather in the back of the church in groups based on what they're dressed as, then the reader reads the Christmas stories, and the groups of kids make their way to the front of the church when it's their turn.

So you start off in the stable, so all the animals go up and sit around the manger.

Then the shepherds join the story, and are vistited by the angels.

Finally the wise men/kings make it. I don't have a big group picture from this point on because Deacon wanted to be a wise man this year (he's more like a wise-guy, really), but he's still too shy, I guess, to go it alone, so I went up with him again. And again, Zeke wanted nothing to do with dressing up, so he sat with Daddy and Finn.

Between each group's arrival, we would sing a Christmas carol relating to the part of the story we were at. Once all the groups were up there, and the wonderful story of Christ's birth was finished being told, all of the kids were moved off the stage, but kept right up front there, and a children's sermon was shared.

This year, our church decided to hold this service twice, once at 3:30 and again at 5:00. We decided to go to the 3:30 service so we could go out to dinner afterwards at a decent time for the kids and get them home with enough time to wind down before bed. So, after church we went to Piccolino's for dinner, then headed home. We put the oh-so-tired-but-doing-SO-well Finn down for a little rest, popped in a movie for the bigger boys and enjoyed the rest of our fun Christmas Eve.