I always have the greatest Christmas Eve intentions. I want to be home all day with the family baking cookies, playing games, reading Christmas stories maybe even busting out a Christmas carol or two. But I never quite seem to be able to pull it off. There is always a last minute trip to the store, the kids fight, no one wants to sing. We have a few Christmas Eve traditions and, I think I might as well be realistic about it, rushing around at the end of the night trying to complete all the traditions is a tradition for us too.
This year, we decided to have a nice dinner so we'd have left overs for Christmas Day. I put a turkey in the oven and proceeded to start baking rolls. I set the timer on the oven for the dough to rise. It dinged and I turned it off. I turned the entire oven off. Luckily I realized my mistake after about 20 minutes but it threw the entire food preparation/baking times off and caused dinner to be later than I planned. On the plus side, the turkey was really, really good. Maybe I've stumbled upon a new technique.
Since Christmas break started the kids have abandoned getting dressed for the day and really wanted/needed new pjs. They were nagging and nagging me for the chance to open them up.
Because my baking was so messed up, there was no possibility of actually baking cookies. Thank goodness for my parents' gift of Oreo candy molds. The kids had a good time creating these cookies. Aren't they impressive? We felt very fancy leaving these for Santa.
We used to watch the Polar Express to help the kids fall asleep but that is a tradition that we don't seem to have time for. Thank you Norad Santa tracker--the kids see that he is in the country and rush to bed. I won't complain about that!
