Christmas Eve & Chinese Take-Out

Tomorrow is when my side of the family will come together to exchange gifts. It will be a small crowd made up of my parents, my grandmother visiting from New Jersey and my sister’s family. My family lives over an hour’s drive away making it so that we don’t see each other too frequently. The oldest cousin, Jacob, will most likely play video games during the entire visit. The youngest cousin is just two and still doesn’t venture far off from his mama. The two middle cousins are close in age to Megan and Paul. Those four most look forward to playing together.

While most families are sitting down to a traditional Christmas dinner, my family will be feasting on local Chinese take-out. I’m loving that I will not have any dishes to wash! We will be eating an early lunch since Adam has to go into work to put the final touches on MainStreet and my brother-in-law is scheduled to work at his job for Fed-Ex. Sometime after lunch we will all exchange our gifts.

Once all the relatives have gone home then my family will leave for church to participate in the Christmas Eve service. The first half will be a MainStreet production geared towards the kids and the second half will be a traditional carol-singing, candle-lighting type ceremony.

We generally open one gift on Christmas Eve. We traditionally do it after the Christmas Eve service and right before bed. This year the kids will be opening their gifts from the extended family during the day. They are very excited that they will be “getting away” with opening more than one gift. I think we will make them save the rest of the gifts for Christmas morning.