Christmas Eve

Our goal this year was to really enjoy Christmas Eve and to have most everything done before then. We did a pretty good job and except for a few last minute things to wrap and some house cleaning, it was a relaxing day together with family. We did our traditional reading the Christmas story from Luke and giving out the new ornament gift. I found a huge, awesome ornament store in Annapolis to pick their ornaments from this year. Chris also surprised me with an ornament this year of a really cute nativity scene, but I forgot to take a picture of it. 

Maddie got a Hello Kitty ornament

Claire got an owl dressed in Steelers garb. 

Amelia got an angel with a picture of herself in it. She previously was the only one without her picture on the tree, so I had to fix that. :)

Since we did a good amount of exploring in DC this year (Air and Space Museum, Museum of Natural History, Cherry Blossom Festival along the tidal basin with all the monuments around it, and the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial) I thought it'd be nice to give Chris a DC ornament.)

After that, we went over to our friend's house to enjoy Christmas Eve dinner together. Chris decided, after falling in love with the cream of crab soup at one of our favorite local restaurants, that he wanted to make cream of crab soup. He found a great recipe and made it to contribute. Our friends' family tradition is to let the kids pick a country, and have their traditional Christmas Eve dinner. This year, since their daughter is learning Japanese, they chose Japan. As it turns out, their traditional Christmas Eve dinner is eating KFC! It was quite amusing to learn this, but they went with it. So with their KFC feast, and our cream of crab and Christmas punch we brought along, it was a tasty dinner. My friend also made a delicious strawberry and cream cake. It was fun to make Christmas eve extra special by celebrating with friends this year. I think this would be a great new tradition if they don't mind us crashing their party! :p