And just when I got rolling again. This weekend is well, if you don't know... We have 15 people over for Christmas Eve celebration. I'll be cooking all weekend, Emma going to visit Santa, we are going to the Black Nativity, a play of the nativity with Langston Hughes poetry and gospel music.
Christmas Eve we'll mingle and then eat dinner (standing rib roast, ham, yorkshire pudding, etc)...
Then we'll gather in the living room and light the 4th Advent Sunday candle (Joy, we'll be reading a Mormon scripture... "Man is that he might have joy"), we'll open the Advent Calendar for the day (take supper on Christmas day to a family in need) and then we'll gather ran the tree. We'll sing Christmas carols as we light the tree candles. Then after that we'll read a children's Christmas story by the candle light and then the Christmas story from Luke.
Then Christmas morning, after the arrival of the big rotund man, Emma will get up and open her stocking (because she'll get up at 5am and that's all she'll be allowed to open till the parents actually sleep) and then we'll open presents. After that we'll go to my Mom's house for Christmas brunch.
That's pretty much how we've done it (minus the Advent wreath.. but that's part now) for the last 10 years or so :).
This year we'll he pleasure of my Mom and step-Dad, brother and sister-in-law, 2 nephews and a niece, and our friends JC and B with their two boys.
