Christmas Eve

Alycia and Trevor arrived on the Friday before Christmas and then Ben and Sharley arrived Christmas Eve. Noticeably absent from our home was Brandon, Serene and their girls and Alex. Both had good excuses to skip out on all of our fun but it was still sad not having them. Alex, of course, is on his mission in Chili and Brandon and Serene are in Texas. 

Serene was due to have a baby on Christmas day so I guess it wouldn't have been wise to travel while in such a delicate condition. Little Rosalie was actually born while we were on our way to Disneyland. How exciting is that? I was still rooting for Christmas Day but I'm sure little Rosalie will be glad to be able to celebrate before the Christmas excitement.

Saturday morning we had a choir practice. Our Christmas program was essential our ward choir singing and of course my favorite part was Kira's two solo's. I just love listening to her play her Oboe. It is so beautiful. 

Grandma helped the boys ice some cookies.

Christmas Eve at the Leavitt household is a major production. It all started when our kids were little and we had them act out the Nativity story. Once they got a bit more talented we had them actually perform. Since we forced all of our kids to start out on an instrument it got to be rather high caliber. Over the years I would say it has actually degraded a bit talent wise but it has sure become a lot more fun. We also have a tradition of caroling to our neighbors. When the kids were all playing instruments we actually had a pretty good performance. Kira on her Oboe, Brandon on his violin, Ben on his trumpet,  Alycia on the flute, Alex on his  Saxaphone and Sarah on her clarinet. I don't think we actually had all six of them at the same time but we did have all of them. This year we skipped the instruments and just sang. Our neighbors all look forward to us coming.

Our talents this year were as follows:

Kira shared a video of one of her Oboe performances. Beautiful as always

Justin bench pressed Evan and Landon

Ben made his famous street taco's for us. 

His lovely wife of course gave him a hand. 

Sharley made home made ice-cream. Delicious.

Trevor did a magic trick. It was actually really good. I have no idea how he did it.

Alycia read a story about the history of Nativities. It seemed quite relevant seeing as we were surrounded by dozens of them. 

And Sarah showed us all how to give a proper back rub. She demonstrated on Sharley. I'm not sure why she didn't pick me.

Evan showed us how he can drink milk like a cat. Pretty good if you ask me.

Landon sang "Red Solo Cup" and did a really good job of it. It was very cute and we were all singing that song all week long.

Lisa normally does a nativity video which she did again this year but it was a different video. Very nice. I normally read the nativity story out of Luke II but this year I cheated and let Linus tell the story from the Peanut's Christmas Show.  

After the talent show we always let the kids open up one present before they go to bed. They don't get to choose which present however and the present we always gave them was pajamas or something similar. Once they married we quit doing the Christmas Eve present but Now Kira and Justin are doing it with their kids. When Evan opened up his pajamas he was so upset that he started bawling. That made all of us laugh which only made him bawl even louder. It was sooo funny. 

What was even more funny is that Alycia decided that her and Trevor would do the Christmas Eve pajama tradtion and when Trevor opened his pajamas (which were actually some work out clothes) he started crying too. For a second he actually had her fooled until she realized he was copying Evan. It was funny. 

We then let the kids have a brief sword fight with their fancy Disneyland swords and put them to bed. 

And then we played well into the night. We of course paid for it the next morning when the kids wanted to get up early but hey, who has time for sleep when your family is home?