Christmas Eve in North Royalton

The couple of days before Christmas was spent making a scrapbook for my parents, wrapping the last few presents, playing, sleeping, packing for MN and baking cookies! I kept forgetting to take pictures, but here's one of Tim dipping red-filled Oreos in white almond bark (they were easy and delicious!).
Michael is frosting the tree-shaped spritz he'd helped me bake earlier. He loved using the cookie press to make the cookies, but didn't care for frosting them (too messy!)...
Other treats were chocolate crinkles (Tim's favorite), Hershey's kiss cookies/peanut butter blossoms (Kraig's fav), large pretzel logs dipped in caramel then in chocolate, 2 batches of puppy chow and 3 pans of "snack mix squares" (which was a popular recipe request from others again this year). Since Kraig's parents and sister-in-law also baked quite a bit this year, we brought some of our treats home for the freezer. Thankfully Kraig's parents made my favorites again - krumkake and sandbakkels, which are both Norwegian cookies.

Tim and I also made about 12 batches of Chex Mix! That started being made/eaten before Thanksgiving this year and was Tim's favorite snack for 2 months. Fortunately I kept getting the Chex cereals for about $1.50 a box with sales and coupons!

Of course Christmas Eve was a big work day for Kraig to prepare for the services. For the first time, the choir sang. Kraig also played a trombone solo and played trombone with a brass/sax group. That evening was definitely the highlight of our Christmas as we remembered and sang of our Savior's birth. Our drummer took this picture just after we sang "Silent Night", before singing "Joy to the World".

The Advent Candles lit that evening.

After church the boys and I made the final preparations for our Christmas Eve dinner this year, fondue. Here's Tim chopping the cilantro for the broth...

Notice how I'm still dressed up but the boys took off their dress shirts (so they wouldn't spill while we were cooking). We enjoyed 3 meats for the broth, 2 kinds of breads for the cheese, and several fruits, graham crackers and marshmallows for the chocolate. Yum! And we had the pleasure to fondue again the following week with my parents.

Kraig and I were pleasantly surprised the boys didn't rush through dinner to open presents, but instead sat at the table talking for quite a while with us before we cleaned up together and then they opened a gift from us. Neither Tim or Michael had asked for it, but we thought they'd enjoy adding new songs and another guitar (for bass) to their guitar (for electric) , drums and microphone with the Guitar Hero 4 they'd received last year from Grandma & Grandpa.

And here they are jamming together. One of the funny things was that they'd been playing their Guitar Hero 4 on and off that day before church without knowing they'd be getting GH 5 that night.

I think this was the first time since Kraig and I were married 16 1/2 years ago that we had a Christmas Eve alone as a family. It was difficult to not be with our parents, siblings, nieces, and nephews this year, but was a very special and memorable evening to start our own Christmas Eve traditions!