For some reason, our Christmas Eve pictures are posting all out of order. Bummer! Unfortunately, blogger does not make it easy to rearrange the pictures. (If you use blogger and know a trick, let me know!) I know Raleigh could help me sort through the html code and fix it, but since he just spent 72 hours organizing 8 years worth of my pictures, I feel bad asking...even though I know he'd be happy to help! For now, let's just go with it.
We attended the 2:00pm church service at Peachtree Presbyterian Church. There were services offered every 2 hours, beginning at 10:00am. Random fact: it is actually the largest Presbyterian congregation in the nation. This is where Beau went to one semester of preschool last year. Although not regular attenders, we have visited quite a bit and I've done some summer Bible studies there. The 2:00 service is for families with young children, so it was perfect for us. Also, our friend Kate was singing in the choir so we enjoyed seeing her perform. Our friend Karen saved us seats, which was so nice!
Here is another shot of us before the service. Palmer was in the car seat drinking a bottle. The service was really, really lovely and told the entire Christmas story through a pageant.
The church's pastor, Viv Pentz, describes it this way, "Tonight our sanctuary becomes the stable where we re-enact the ancient drama of christ’s birth. In our singing we become one with the heavenly choir proclaiming the ‘good news of great joy which shall be to all people.’ tonight when our Lord comes again in search of lodging, this time he finds welcome in the inn of our hearts."
Here is a link to the pdf of the program.
There was a real baby for baby Jesus, which I found to be neat. You could tell the baby was very young. There were also live animals that walked through the sanctuary including a camel and a donkey. The Roman Centurions were dressed in armor and walked in to the tune of loud organ music. I was actually nervous that Beau would be frightened, because sometimes things like that make him nervous, but he did great! All of the choirs did so good and we all enjoyed singing along to the Christmas hymns. I wish I had taken a picture of a friend Kate while she was singing.
Everyone is smiling except Beau! Why is it so hard to get a shot of everyone looking at the camera! Ha!
This was taken before church. Beau was having some almonds on the front porch before we headed out.
This is obviously not a great shot of me, but Palmer looks so cute! 8 months old for his first Christmas. We originally had 5:00pm dinner reservations. But after church, we were all so hungry so we made a change of plans. We went to J Alexanders immediately after church and ate around 3:30. It was actually perfect! The timing was great to enjoy a yummy meal, go home and play for a minute, leave cookies for Santa and head to bed. Well, Beau and Palmer headed to bed. :)
Here we are at home getting ready to leave our cookies for Santa!
Time for a little wrestling!
Mimi and Grandpa gave the boys an awesome wagon! Raleigh did a great job putting it together. We laughed though because it required almost all hammering, so it was pretty funny putting it together once the boys were in bed. Beau was actually awake until almost midnight just playing in his room.
Here is another shot of Beau before church. Thanks for the handsome cardigan Aunt Connie!
Cookies! We had intentions of baking cookies for Santa, but we had a ton of yummy cookies that Aunt Angie had baked so we ended up using those instead.
Nana gave the boys a train table so that was also put together.
It required less hammering. :)
It was a wonderful Christmas Eve. We tried to make it a little different than what we've done in the past. Since my dad passed away, we've kept some traditions the same, and that feels right. Traditions are really important to me, but God has really taught me a lot about that over the last few years and sometimes it is healthy to make changes. Sometimes life dictates change. In the past, we've always gone to an evening church service on Christmas Eve, followed by dinner at a hibachi steakhouse. Thinking back, I laughed because my dad probably didn't love the Japanese food, but he did it for me. He enjoyed it, because it was something I enjoyed. We may do that again one year, but for this Christmas, our first Christmas without my dad, it just felt right to do something different. We had carrot cake at J Alexanders, my dad's favorite! He and my mom went to J Alexanders all time time for special celebrations.
It was a wonderful Christmas Eve. While we were at home we kept a candle lit in remembrance of my dad.
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