Hanson's Happenings!: Christmas eve

I love holidays. Wether they are relaxed and lazy days or if they are full of people and fun and excitement, I love them either way. I think we were blessed to have one of each kind this year. Christmas eve was a day packed with people, good food, and Christmas-y things like carols and presents.

My parents and Daniel and Maria were heading up to see my Grandma we had our Christmas dinner earlier than usual. Gunnar's dad and his friend Ann came up. This is our third year of doing Christmas eve dinner at our house and I always have a wonderful time. We had green beans, twice baked potatoes, ham, salad and rolls. It was all delicious, if I do say so myself. :)

Grace was super excited to wear a "party dress". My mom had told her she was bringing her two presents so she ran around the house all morning saying "ta, two presents" over and over again. I guess the whole Christmas greed thing kicks in at a young age. She also learned to say "merry Christmas" and "baby Jesus" both of which I found to be quite cute.

After lunch we opened presents. Grace got a back pack full of plastic animals and stroller for her baby dolls. The stroller said on the box "some assembly required" which in actuality meant "for your sake I hope you either have a degree in engineering or are related to MacGyver because if not you are in for it". Thankfully Maria and Gunnar were able to figure it out. Grace LOVES it. And by LOVES it, I mean she woke up at 4 am wanting to play with it and pretty much keeps it within arm reach of her all day long.

Ann taught Grace how to sing "ba ba black sheep" which she was waiting for her stroller to be assembled. When Grace sings it, there is a lot of waving of her plastic sheep while yelling ba ba ba.

Gunnar scored some socks with moose on them. What else could a guy want?

After opening presents we headed over to the house we are in the process of buying so we could show it to Gunnar's dad, who hadn't seen it yet.

Our family left around 3:30 which gave us a little down time before we headed back to church around 5:30 to get everything ready for the Christmas eve Service.

We were so excited and blessed that our friends the Brach-Tani family came up from La Mesa for the service. Grace's friends Lilah and Isabel are both super precious sweet little girls. They were looking particularly cute that night decked out in their holiday wear!