Christmas Eve

I can’t believe that Christmas has come and gone so quickly.  I swear that the older I get, the faster time goes.  We had a wonderful Christmas Eve.  Here is cute little Portie all dressed up for the evening.

And here is Paul and I and our little family.  Paul is so handsome!!

 


Every year we go to my Mom’s house for Christmas Eve dinner and every year she goes all out on our dinner and making everything so cozy.  I appreciate her so much for that.  Just looking at the pictures of the food makes me so excited for next years Christmas dinner. And I love the pictures of Paul and Porter standing by the yummy food just waiting to be able to dig in.  Like father like son..haha. 

Here is everyone enjoying their delicious Christmas Eve dinner.




Porter ate almost everything on his plate.  He LOVED the food.  And I think that Paul and Porter would agree that their favorite was the white German Sausages that my Mom special orders every year from Siegfrieds.  They are to die for.  Yummy!! 

Every year I am so sad when I finish Christmas Eve dinner.  It makes me so sad that I have to wait a whole year until the next time.   Every  year as part of the dessert, my Mom makes Norwegian ric krem (which is rice pudding).  It has a delicious red sauce that she pours on top that is sooo good. 


The Norwegian tradition is to put an almond in the rice and whoever finds the almond in their bowl wins a prize.  Teddy was our lucky winner this year. 

After dinner we were all SO FULL but who could turn down yummy Christmas treats?  I made these Norwegian Christmas donuts that I remember my Mom making all of the time when we were younger.  They are called smultringer and they are absolutely delicious.  I overcooked mine a little to much so they didn’t taste as good as they should have..but they were still fun to munch on. 

We then played a fun game where my Mom had wrapped a present in layers and layers of wrapping paper.  We all then had to wear gloves and had 15 seconds to try and open the present one layer at a time.  Whoever managed first to open the present won whatever was inside.  Here we are playing..it was a lot of fun. 




We let Porter try without his gloves.  He was so cute.

And guess who won the game??  Teddy of course.  He won everything tonight. 

We had such a wonderful evening.  I love my family so much and we sure missed the members of my family that weren’t there this year. 


I love this picture because it is a picture of Porter coloring on a little stool that his 3rd great grandpa (I think it was 3rd) made.  How neat is that?
Porter was pretty tired at the end of the evening.


So we hurried and got him home and to bed.  Paul and I had a fun night wrapping presents and getting everything ready for Christmas morning.  Here is how it looked before we went to bed.

Thank you so much Mom for all of your hard work in making our Christmas Eve so incredibly perfect and cozy.  We all have so many wonderful memories over the years and they are all thanks to my Mom.  You are the best Mom.  Thank you so much!!  Happy Christmas Eve everyone!!