Our Ohio Christmas Eve.

We decided that we really didn't want to give up having Christmas with our little family just because we are fortunate enough to spend Christmas in Utah with our families this year... so we decided to have the best of both worlds and give our kids two Christmases this year! One in Ohio... and one in Utah. It worked out nicely since their main gifts are pretty bulky and would be hard to transport. We've had such a fun day!

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It started out with a playgroup for Grammers. It wasn't planned to be all kids ages 10-15 months old but that's who ended up coming over! Graham had a ball playing with so many kids just his size!

The rest of the day was filled with fun for me and the kids. We made candy necklaces together... Lincoln was so proud to do it all by himself!Gracie enjoyed looking "so pretty!" She has insisted on wearing 'pink dresses' the last two days. She's finally a true girly girl and I love it!

Graham had a lot of fun practicing walking... He's doing great!

He also enjoyed trying to get Gracie's candy necklace and succeeded a few times...

We made mint chocolate chip cookies for Santa Claus. We is code for me... the kids were all excited to help me until it was actually time to do it... then the computer games were far too tempting to resist. Lincoln actually said to me "Mom... how about you just do it... because you're just so good at it." He's a smart boy!

We made lots of hot chocolate in our crock pot to keep going for the next few days. One of my mom's Christmas traditions that we can't help but carry on.We had our traditional Christmas Eve dinner. A simple soup of chicken broth, potatoes, green onions, and a small amount of chicken with bread and butter. We like to eat what Jeremy calls, "a poor man's supper" to remind us how blessed we are to have food to eat. It's a fun tradition we borrowed from a family in our old ward. We love it!

Gracie and Lincoln had their first cup of hot cocoa with whip cream on top. Yummy!

Later we read the Christmas story out of a wonderful book called "When Jesus Was Born in Bethlehem," by Joseph Brickey. It's our favorite because it has big pictures for the kids to see and most of it is straight out of the scriptures.

Then we had the kids dress up as Joseph, Mary and Baby Jesus.

Graham wasn't too sure about the idea...

...and only lasted for a little bit.

I thought it would be fun to post the picture from last year of the kids doing the nativity.Next we had the kids open their traditional Christmas Eve pajamas. They were way more excited about new pajamas than I thought they would be!

Then we got our plate together for Santa. Lincoln has been very particular about what we needed to leave out for Santa this year. It had to be chocolate milk and warm chocolate chip cookies. And he wanted to leave out nine carrots for each reindeer but we assured him that we only needed to take care of Rudolph because Santa takes care of the rest of them. So, he opted for just one carrot. Then he decided that we needed to add some hot cocoa since he liked it so much... and he threw in an apple for Rudolph as well. He helped me write an adorable little note to Santa thanking him for all the toys he was bringing. It was quite the event putting it all together!We ended our fun Ohio Christmas Eve by going to see some fun lights. The General Electric headquarters are right down the street and they have quite the display of lights. It's nothing compared to some that we've seen in Utah... but it's big for Cleveland! The kids loved it and were all tired out when we got home and went straight to bed.

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Stay tuned to our Christmas Morning post later this weekend! We're excited!