Christmas Eve!

Christmas Eve Day we went sledding up in Idaho City with people from the ward, it was so fun! Besides the adventure finding the right turnoff and crossing the abyss, (the bridge did not look like a great idea with our van, but we lived) it was great. The three older kids went right to the hills, flying down the runs and freaking me out a bit. Those hills were fast!

Grace loved going down with her friend Aubrey, and Reese and Cameron had races with a couple other guys. Aubree went down the hill a few times with RD, but then wanted to do it herself. It was so fun watching the kids race down the hill,  and I was glad there were no major injuries, though Cameron got clipped by Reese. It started to snow, and after awhile Aubree was cold and done. The morning/afternoon were super fun, we were glad there was enough snow to go!
 We headed home, and RD and I made a lot of food and treats. Most of it could have been made earlier, but we were not very prepared this year, but we also didn't stress out getting stuff done, so I'm not sure if it was good or bad. We had our Christmas Eve dinner of fish, bread, dates, cheese, homegrown grape juice, (and broccoli to get in a veggie).

It's fun to talk and think about Christ eating similar foods, and the miracles. And it's pretty simple. We have gone through all the fish we brought from AK many months ago, and we tried some wild silver salmon from a grocery store a month or so ago, and it was so disappointing, I didn't know if we could use it for Christmas Eve. But we had a little Christmas miracle, and a friend of RD's gave him 2 beautiful fillets of silver salmon from a recent fishing trip to AK!!!! Hooray!! It was simply perfect.

 We made and decorated spritz cookies while we read the nativity in the scriptures and sang carols. The 3 older kids all tried out using the cookie press, and did pretty good with it. All the cookies got covered in sprinkles, and Aubree helped out by eating sprinkles straight from the jar.

 We then ate the cookies while we watched "Joy to the World" about Christ's birth, life, and death. Grace said her head hurt and went to bed early, we got the rest of them to bed, and they all knocked out surprisingly quick. RD and I got to bed around midnight, then were up throughout the night when Grace threw up, then Cameron threw up, and had a hard time sleeping. It kind of dulled our enthusiasm for the morning, but since I was up anyway since 4am, we were ready for the kids when Cameron woke them all up at 7. Hearing your girls cry cause they're tired and grumpy when their puky brother wakes them up really wasn't the funnest thing to hear Christmas morning, but I guess that day is another post.