Christmas Eve 2011

The first part of Christmas Eve day was fairly low key - cleaning up the ski stuff from the day before and cleaning up the house and maybe running a few last minute errands. Unfortunately, poor Amelia woke up not feeling well and spent the day in bed as we went to our various festivities. I think she was completely exhausted and a fever was her body's way of saying she needed some rest.

In the afternoon, our first stop was at my Grandpa Backman's house to celebrate with all of my Mom's family. We visited for a little bit while everyone was eating, but had to move on to our next stop before they got to the nativity and presents.
We made a quick stop at home to check on Amelia and to pick up presents and then headed over to Grandma Cathy's for Christmas Eve dinner.

Samantha is being well trained in the art of making ebelskivers. I hope that this will serve us well one day soon since neither Shawn or I have ever actually made ebelskivers ourselves. (We do have a lovely pan but it is waiting to be seasoned.)

We are sitting patiently at the table waiting to gorge ourselves.

I laugh every time I see this picture because it looks like Jonas has eaten himself sick, but really, it's just a bad photo, he had barely gotten started.

That's more like it. (There were more foods available but Jonas, as usual, stuck to just the basics.)

More cooking.

Ah, ebelskiver perfection.

After getting sufficiently full, we moved onto the next phase of the evening - more present opening. Generally, Cathy goes with some sort of theme so it is fun to see what it will be each year. Everyone has nice, big boxes.

And we each wait patiently until it is our turn.

What could it be?

Oh, there's a little hint on that box I'm holding...

Of course, we give presents, too.

Peter, offering his present opening services once again.

So, what is it that we all went home with? A brand new pair of Uggs for each of us. We will all have toasty warm toes for the rest of the winter!We didn't stay too long since Amelia was at home alone, so we headed home to wrap up Christmas eve there. We had to wake Amelia up to open a present. I felt so bad, but knew she would be upset to miss out.

Everyone is excited to open one last present before going to bed.

And the Christmas pajamas are on and everyone is ready for bed. (Well, at least Shawn and I were ready for everyone to go to bed.)

Seriously, how many pictures does it take to get just one where everyone looks decent? (Apparently more than we were willing to take.)

And finally, one last sleep before the big day.