Christmas Eve Traditions

I love my mother and the traditions that she keeps alive in our family.

Every year on Christmas Eve our entire family goes out to eat and to see a movie. This has been a tradition since forever, literally since before I was alive, and I just love it!

This year we changed it up just slightly and went to see the movie first. We all met up at Turkey Creek and went to see the new Yogi Bear movie. We were all pretty excited about it! The movie was great. I had to miss a few parts due to potty breaks for Taylor and attempted potty breaks for Liam. More on that later...

After the movie we had about an hour before our restaurant reservations, so we all split up and did a little last minute shopping. Me and Will and the kids ran to Target and Walmart to buy diapers and a little seat for the big potty so Liam will maybe start using the big potty instead of his little potty all the time! Will said our buggy was full of irony with the diapers and the potty seat! Then we headed on over to Connor's...yum!

We had a delicious meal! Here is the whole family after eating. We should really start taking these pictures before we eat so that we are all not so stuffed! I love our big family and hope that it only continues to grow in the future!

After lunch we headed home and got settled in for a few traditions of our own. We baked some cookies for Santa...

And then it was time to open one present!

Taylor and Liam were so excited to open a present. They had seen the presents under the tree for about a week at this point and they wanted to open one so bad! So it was finally time. Opening this one gift on Christmas is also a tradition of my mom's, but I am glad that we are carrying it on in our family!

And the present is...new pajamas! They were both so excited!

Liam with his new pajamas!

Then it was off to put them on and take a picture with their new ornaments.

Here is Taylor with her new Belle ornament. She really enjoyed watching Beauty and the Beast for the first time this year!

And this is Liam with his new Mickey Mouse ornament. He is still completely in love with Mickey Mouse! And I love his little smile! This is what I get everytime I ask him to smile now!

After they got pajamas on and pictures made we set out cookies and milk for Santa

Liam with the cookies

Taylor checking on the milk. She looks like she is happy here, but she was really upset that I asked her to come over there by the cookies and milk and have her picture made. She was starting to get really tired!

The next tradition is one that me and Will started a few years ago and decided that we really liked it. We all got snuggled up on the couch together and watched Elf. We love Elf and the kids really like it too! We thought they would go to sleep during it, but no, they were way too wound up and excited. So after Elf, we watch A Christmas Story and they finally fell asleep about half way through that!

It was a long day but full of so much tradition and excitement. I loved every minute of it!

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On the potty training note, Liam did great all day yesterday wearing underwear around the house and using his potty. He even did great when we went to Grandma's house for Christmas. He wore a pull-up today and he told me a few times that he needed to go pee. When I took him though, he wouldn't go on a big potty. Not at the movies (tried twice), not at Connor's, not at Babies R Us. But when we got home around 3 or 4, he was still dry and had not peed all day long. When we walked in the door he went straight to his potty and peed a bunch! And then he went consistently the rest of the evening. I would prefer that he not hold it that long, but it is progress towards potty training knowing that he can hold it that long!