'Twas The Night Before Christmas

Inspired by the Aidukaitis' favorite Christmas movie A Christmas Story, Lee's family's Christmas Eve tradition is to go to dinner at their favorite Chinese restaurant. Even though they don't cut a duck's head off or sing "Fa, rah, rah, rah, rah" it is still a fun tradition to be a part of.

Here are photos of everyone in attendance - except Natalie. I forgot to take a picture of her fast asleep on a nice bed Mike made for her out of a foam mattress and our shopping cart seat cover.

(Spencer will love that I posted this close-up picture of him. He refuses to let anyone take his picture but I was able to snap this one before he could turn around. You'd never know otherwise - I think it looks like he posed for it!)

After dinner we went to the Narducci's to participate in their family's traditional Christmas Eve gift exchange. With our gifts in hand we all sit in a circle while someone reads 'Twas The Night Before Christmas. Whenever the book says the word "and" we pass the gifts to the left until the story ends. Mike and I gave the same gifts this year. Both gifts contained 4 boxes of pencils (an inside joke that I won't explain here), a Joy to the World VHS tape (extra tapes our ward purchased forever ago that they were trying to get rid of...really does anyone own a VHS player anymore?) and a $25 gift card (both given to me for Christmas by my boss to restaurants that have no vegetarian entree selections, and therefore are pretty much worthless to us). Needless to say, our gifts at first appeared to suck until the lucky recipient opened the VHS tape to find the "valuable" gift card inside.

We always have fun on Christmas Eve. Natalie enjoyed running around the inside of our circle, grabbing presents as we passed them wanting to open them all. But, not to our surprise, Grandma Narducci bought Natalie her own gift to open that night. It was 26 little board books, one for each letter in the alphabet, that came in the cutest square box with a lid and carrying handles. Very Cute. We came home with some pretty cool gifts, as well. I got a harmonica (I love harmonicas!), a book and some epoxy. Mike came home with pasta, pasta sauce and bread sticks.

Unfortunately the night had to come to an end. We would have liked to hang out longer but we had to get Natalie home and prepare for Santa's arrival. We also didn't want to risk having Santa skip our house because we were still awake!