Traditions

What a fun night we had on Christmas Eve. We went to my dad's annual Prime Rib dinner. For anyone that knows my dad, he is an excellent cook and this is his highlight of the year. He cooks a full Prime Rib with all of the trimmings for our family. He has been doing making this dinner for 32 years and he says this is his last...we'll have to see if that's true.

This year we were lucky to have my grandparents be part of our celebrations. It has been quite a few years since they were with us on Christmas. It was nice to have 4 generations together on Christmas.

Staci's boyfriend Aaron also joined us (nothing like baptism by fire having his first meet and greet with the family on Christmas Eve.) I think he passed with flying colors!

After we had dinner at mom and dad's we went to Aunt Roseann's annual Christmas Eve open house. It's something we look forward to each year. It's a time when we get to see and visit with a lot of Mike's family we only see once per year.

We had big plans to get done with all of our running around early so we could come home and bake cookies for Santa and watch a family movie. We didn't leave Roseann's until around 9:00 and Emma was out like a light in about 5 minutes. Sam and I decided to compromise and set out cream puffs from the freezer rather than make cookies. Sam said he gets a lot of cookies so he would probably like cream puffs but to only put out 4 since he eats so many cookies. He also thought I should make Santa some tea instead of milk because he has to drink a lot of milk on Christmas Eve....so chamomile tea it was. It was a late night for Mike and I, we stayed up watching movies and hanging out with Dave(Mike's borther) since he is moving to California. We are going to miss his so much. He is the life of every family gathering and just fun to hang out with!