Christmas on Eve

My immediate family has begun celebrating Christmas on Christmas Eve, and I really enjoy it. This year, while starting a bit stressfully because of moving, was really wonderful. Paul's parents came down this year and that made my parents house nice and crowded and it seemed like everyone enjoyed themselves. Everyone was there by two in the afternoon or so and after refreshments and visiting we had a tastey chili homemade chili dinner complete with cornbread! It was so yummy - a bit spicy too so I was sporting chapstick lips for the rest of the night :)

Gift giving was stress free and simple this year, with the focus being on my nephew. My parents love to give him the best creativity-inducing gifts and this year was all about an art easel with all the trimmings. My sister stated that the play-do would stay in the containers for awhile longer because the last batch given to Zeke ended up being smooshed into carpet or partly digested. He's just not old enough to grab the concept on that. From the rest of the family he got a LeapFrog Clickstart My First Computer. Generally I wouldn't have even considered this at his age, but he sits on his daddy's lap while he plays WoW sometimes and he's really interested in the keys and the mouse and stuff. My sister usually just lets him mess around, but he's found out how to open internet browsers and whatnot so its just not practical anymore. He's really enjoying it and it's introducing him to numbers & letters and stuff which is important.

Not that any gift is better than another, but I have to report that my parents gave Paul and I a wonderful gift - a digital video camera! They really did wonderfully because it was just what I was looking for - so far as flash based and not disc or drive based - and it's very simple to use with great results. I was shocked because they're pretty expensive and as I said Christmas this year was going to be simple and stress-free, especially financially. But I'm just so excited to know that we'll be able to video tape everything now once Evy comes and it's not another thing I'll need to budget for :)

So Christmas on Eve was really nice this year and I hope that next year is just as wonderful :)