Jenni's Blog: Merry Christmas Eve!

Look at this excited Christmas face!

The kids were waiting, waiting, waiting for our guests to arrive on Christmas Eve. Look at the girls curls here because by the time we leave for church, the curls were long gone. Oh well, lots of fun outside will do that to hair.

Nell and I ready for the festivities to begin! Nell and I throw this Christmas Eve party for our church family every year (and by every year, I mean this is the second year but whatever, details, details). We make gallons and gallons and gallons of soup and chili (and by we, I mean Nell) and order trays and trays and trays of fruit, veggies, cheese, sausage and cake (Me). I have decided I am all about a party as long as I can order everything or have Nell make everything. We always act like we got it all together, no biggie, we got this- we text each other a zillion times and start planning in November. Then we both panic the day before the party and Nell makes another 20 gallons of chili and I order another 45 pounds of fruit. This year the RSVP yes list was just below 100 people. Nell and I figured, we got this. It's not like our church family is going to eat like a bunch of linebackers or something right before Christmas Eve church....um, we were so wrong. Nell said it looked like a swarm of locusts came in, they ate everything! I swear some of my bar stools were even gnawed upon. It was lovely though, lots of fun and fellowship and then a mad, frantic dash to change kids' clothes, clean up any leftovers (much quicker this year due to the linebackers) and caravan over to church.

Addison scooped up baby Nathaniel as fast as she could. Luckily, Pastor Jon's son is happy with everyone...even a three year old who kept squeezing his belly and saying how cute it was. Addison is baby crazy, but she is out of luck on the big sister role. I figure if I just swing her by the church nursery once a week she can get her baby fix that way. This womb is closed for business.

Some of the "big" kids.

This is a fun tradition we do for the kids. They all sing Happy Birthday to Jesus and blow out the candles (although I couldn't get them lit this year) and how sweet to listen to them all sing, three children deep. All these kiddos who were just tiny babies a blink ago.

Amelia read a bible passage from Luke before we sang Happy Birthday! Glory to the Newborn King!

This is the kids right before we left for church. Sweaty, dirty, stringy hair...but so much fun so totally worth it. ( Wellhoefers...remember the dirty sheep sermon, they reminded me of dirty sheep).

Christmas Eve church, Addison is in a sugar coma and holding on to Luke's hair for comfort. Luke couldn't even blink, he was so tired and Amelia was as sweet as ever. During the children's sermon, Pastor Scott noticed the kids were really jazzed up and hyper. He thought it was just Christmas Eve excitement. It could have been that all those kids just came from my house and ate their body weights in cake and

M &M's. Half way through the service, Addison put her head on my lap and her feet on Stephen's and told Stephen, "Daddy, rub my back." That is code for "I need to fall asleep right now or you are all in for a massive temper tantrum." Then she sat straight up and said, "I have a bad tummy ache from all that junk I ate." Then plopped back down and passed out on our laps.